The globe is spinning.
It's one of those globes that feature an electromagnetic push and pull system. I can't really explain it any other way. If I were Dr. Manhattan I would say something like, "it's still there, twenty seconds in the past." For right now, it's just lying there. It's only effect is through an invisible force that hasn't existed in human thought until recently. I cannot stop staring at this globe that hangs there.
I'll keep it short and sweet for now, but I'm building up for something soon. For now, know that everything before this has already been written and posted on my facebook. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We live in a great country, a great life. We live a life of ease, all brought upon by the wonders of the intellectual intercourse of man upon matter.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thoughts this Semester Part 9: Spanish and Jessica Rabbit
Here I am, finishing a portfolio assignment I do not want to do. I am learning about culture in movies and periodicals in a different language that has been spat out to me for six years. This is not a joke. I spent two years in junior high, two years in high school, and now two years in college and I’m just now finishing this requirement. At one point, I assumed that taking this early would prevent this from happening, like some preeminent strike that would assure my language safety. But now I am fully sure that Spanish has failed me, and so has Jessica Rabbit.
“Look Valiant, the wife’s poison but he thinks she’s Betty Crocker. I want you to follow her, get some nice juicy pictures I can wise the rabbit up with….the Rabbit sings at a joint called the Ink and Paint Club. Toon review, strictly humans only okay?”
Valiant goes, meets with Betty Boop, and based off of people’s responses, he’s a little confused on everyone’s reaction. Marvin Acme puts on cologne. Crowds of men storm to the stage. Valiant looks at Betty and says, “What’s with him?”
“Mr. Acme never misses a night when Jessica performs” Betty says. Valiant replies sarcastically, “he’s got a thing for rabbits huh?”
But there’s no confusion after her sleek and perfect debut into the movie. Smooth voice, silk hair, puffy lips, and I was in love with her before I knew I liked girls. No one can deny that there is something impossibly sexy about Jessica Rabbit, because, “she’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way.”
Jessica Rabbit never asked for that existence, but here she is, amazing crowds with her song, “Why don’t you do right?” And right there in plain irony, the most amazing woman in the history in creation is married to a rabbit.
We’ve already discussed how much I love and watched this movie as a child, but it goes beyond words. Jessica Rabbit inspired two things about what kind of man I should be: a man that does right, and a man that makes women laugh. This movie may very well have set up the framework for my entire high school personality in regards to women. Even Betty Boop explains to Valiant that Jessica Rabbit, “is a very lucky girl.”
The movie makers were not stupid when they made this movie. They had every intention for Jessica Rabbit to be everything a man wanted. She was dedicated, even though there were hundreds of men that visited the Ink and Paint Club. She was a beautiful and possibly dangerous hourglass. She had longer legs than a giraffe. She had sly, sexy eyes. But more important than any of this: Jessica loved and married Roger, the ugliest, badly dressed Rabbit because Roger could tell a joke.
Sometimes I love and hate my childhood, and this subconsciously may be the reason why I hated growing up. As much as I hate real life, eventually I would have to turn and face the terrible truth. And the truth is that women cannot possibly be Jessica Rabbit. Now I walk through life with no expectations, because of the fact that she does not really exist. All those wonderful thoughts of a future of jokes to keep someone to me was a house of cards. It was the biggest joke of all. I can imagine women looking at Jessica Rabbit with hate and disgust, because they have every right to be upset. Jessica Rabbit represents everything that most men want to a perfected Hollywood degree, and just like John Cusack and I, it cannot be achieved.
Spanish has truly failed me, because every time I walk into class I see it even in the teachers’ eyes. There is nothing more insulting to an educated person than to have wasted six years of his life when he could’ve just gone to a foreign country for six months. Everyone in my class walks in tired, and uninterested, because the world of Spanish has been gutted and offered as a refused sacrifice. We’re done listening to the culture of Guatemala, and hearing about the past subjunctive, which is hard to even define in English. Teachers look at us and just pass us through. What was a burning desire is now nothing but frustration.
It’s not their fault, but it’s somebody’s, and I don’t know who is responsible. After six years of Spanish I can’t even put it on my résumé.
I hate everything Spanish. I hate Dia de los Muertos. I hate nouns that have to agree in number and gender. I hate all the stupid little equations they teach you. Necesito una vida sin Spanish. In hindsight, I would’ve visited a country. In hindsight I would’ve told Ms. Gray, and Ms. Podd, and Mr. Garcia, and Ms. Jones, and Sra. Evans, and Sr. Torres, and Sra. Muniz, and Ms. McClanahan that I quit, and hope their language becomes illegal, because I am ruined.
What did they hope to achieve? Did they really think that it would work? 23 hours of English on every other day and one hour of Spanish? An easily breakable online program that encourages bypassing? The almost impossibility of failing because each exam is worth 5% which is abysmal compared to being ¼ the power of participation and attendance.
And here is where we enter, knowing that all we need to do is provide our carcasses as a sacrifice, so they can see that and be pleased.
“C’mon Roger let’s go home, I’ll bake you a carrot cake” -Jessica Rabbit
“Look Valiant, the wife’s poison but he thinks she’s Betty Crocker. I want you to follow her, get some nice juicy pictures I can wise the rabbit up with….the Rabbit sings at a joint called the Ink and Paint Club. Toon review, strictly humans only okay?”
Valiant goes, meets with Betty Boop, and based off of people’s responses, he’s a little confused on everyone’s reaction. Marvin Acme puts on cologne. Crowds of men storm to the stage. Valiant looks at Betty and says, “What’s with him?”
“Mr. Acme never misses a night when Jessica performs” Betty says. Valiant replies sarcastically, “he’s got a thing for rabbits huh?”
But there’s no confusion after her sleek and perfect debut into the movie. Smooth voice, silk hair, puffy lips, and I was in love with her before I knew I liked girls. No one can deny that there is something impossibly sexy about Jessica Rabbit, because, “she’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way.”
Jessica Rabbit never asked for that existence, but here she is, amazing crowds with her song, “Why don’t you do right?” And right there in plain irony, the most amazing woman in the history in creation is married to a rabbit.
We’ve already discussed how much I love and watched this movie as a child, but it goes beyond words. Jessica Rabbit inspired two things about what kind of man I should be: a man that does right, and a man that makes women laugh. This movie may very well have set up the framework for my entire high school personality in regards to women. Even Betty Boop explains to Valiant that Jessica Rabbit, “is a very lucky girl.”
The movie makers were not stupid when they made this movie. They had every intention for Jessica Rabbit to be everything a man wanted. She was dedicated, even though there were hundreds of men that visited the Ink and Paint Club. She was a beautiful and possibly dangerous hourglass. She had longer legs than a giraffe. She had sly, sexy eyes. But more important than any of this: Jessica loved and married Roger, the ugliest, badly dressed Rabbit because Roger could tell a joke.
Sometimes I love and hate my childhood, and this subconsciously may be the reason why I hated growing up. As much as I hate real life, eventually I would have to turn and face the terrible truth. And the truth is that women cannot possibly be Jessica Rabbit. Now I walk through life with no expectations, because of the fact that she does not really exist. All those wonderful thoughts of a future of jokes to keep someone to me was a house of cards. It was the biggest joke of all. I can imagine women looking at Jessica Rabbit with hate and disgust, because they have every right to be upset. Jessica Rabbit represents everything that most men want to a perfected Hollywood degree, and just like John Cusack and I, it cannot be achieved.
Spanish has truly failed me, because every time I walk into class I see it even in the teachers’ eyes. There is nothing more insulting to an educated person than to have wasted six years of his life when he could’ve just gone to a foreign country for six months. Everyone in my class walks in tired, and uninterested, because the world of Spanish has been gutted and offered as a refused sacrifice. We’re done listening to the culture of Guatemala, and hearing about the past subjunctive, which is hard to even define in English. Teachers look at us and just pass us through. What was a burning desire is now nothing but frustration.
It’s not their fault, but it’s somebody’s, and I don’t know who is responsible. After six years of Spanish I can’t even put it on my résumé.
I hate everything Spanish. I hate Dia de los Muertos. I hate nouns that have to agree in number and gender. I hate all the stupid little equations they teach you. Necesito una vida sin Spanish. In hindsight, I would’ve visited a country. In hindsight I would’ve told Ms. Gray, and Ms. Podd, and Mr. Garcia, and Ms. Jones, and Sra. Evans, and Sr. Torres, and Sra. Muniz, and Ms. McClanahan that I quit, and hope their language becomes illegal, because I am ruined.
What did they hope to achieve? Did they really think that it would work? 23 hours of English on every other day and one hour of Spanish? An easily breakable online program that encourages bypassing? The almost impossibility of failing because each exam is worth 5% which is abysmal compared to being ¼ the power of participation and attendance.
And here is where we enter, knowing that all we need to do is provide our carcasses as a sacrifice, so they can see that and be pleased.
“C’mon Roger let’s go home, I’ll bake you a carrot cake” -Jessica Rabbit
Thoughts this Semester Part 8: Now 36, Then, and Video Games
“And the future, it’s here, it’s bright, it’s now.” -Regina Spektor, Machine
We wake up with our music, our alarm, technologically geared to our time frame. We eat our breakfast, brand name and all, as we watch the televised imagination of our world unfold. We go to work, while smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee with a name stamped on it. We read magazines of people showing us how to live, and we do exactly what they say. We go home to watch a football game sponsored by someone with a halftime report sponsored by someone with commercials in between every first down. And while it may make my life easier, I can’t help but thinking of “Now!”
Did you know that Now! 36 has been released? It came out November 9, 2010, with hits like my personal favorite, “Dynamite” and my not so personal favorite, “Teenage Dream.” While the “Now that’s what I call Music” series has gone on internationally since 1983, it started in the U.S. with it’s first release in 1998. So you must be thinking, “how are there 36 of these when the U.S. albums are only 12 years running.” Well it’s not only for profit, but maybe there’s a whole angle we’re missing here, and finding it out may make me hate reality.
You’ll never guess what’s on the first Now unless you owned it. The only thing I guessed correctly was that it probably had a Backstreet Boys or N’Sync song. Sure enough, “As Long as you Love Me” was the number two track. Others included “Say you’ll be there” by the Spice Girls, “Zoot Suit Riot” by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.
Different times.
It is amazing how much things have changed, and it makes you give the go ahead for 36 other albums. But there’s a bit of information I’m leaving out, and it’s the information that got me thinking about reality and what it’s all about: also on Now 1 is “Karma Police” by Radiohead.
I literally put my hands on my head and pulled some hair out in sheer horror of being another sucker of the mass production of advertising. “Karma Police?” Let’s be clear: Karma Police on Radiohead’s album of Ok Computer is not the reason why I adore Radiohead. If anything I’ve heard this song maybe four or five times. Yet here it was, a song by them on the first Now.
Was I just another pawn? Another man who was played for twelve years by some back stage puppet master? In short, yes and no.
“People want to be told what to do so badly, that they’ll listen to anyone” -Don Draper
While Don may not have been right about the direction of cigarettes or television, he was most certainly right about this. In this scene, Don Draper is replying to a criticizing hippie about the evil nature of advertising. “How do you sleep at night?” the attacker questions. Don replies, “on a bed full of money.”
Don Draper’s job is not easy, but it’s probably not hard either. From the house to work and back again, people are probably going to be flooded with information. What’s the latest this? Can I get that for cheap? Will my life be better off with this? Is my family going to appreciate that? The world is full of opportunities, and wasting away all of your money on products is certainly one of them.
Media may be the middle man of my manifestation of malevolence toward material reality. It is in music with which I imagine the world. Daydreams flicker as I listen to Radiohead. Musicals are joined by me as I listen to Regina Spektor. Michael Bublé serenades me as I get into a suit and tie. Nuclear Bombs explode on the far horizon as I listen to rock music. Hindsight feels so much better after watching Mad Men. Life feels so much more satisfying when I read Ayn Rand.
I could go on, but this is but a taste of the hefty meal we are being fed in order to live on day by day.
I will give you my best and often times craziest example. My philosophy of life is based around a medium that is ridiculed and talked down to. My way of expressing my opinions is based upon something that is mocked and made fun of even at church services.
My very soul was changed because of a video game.
Video Games
You may mock me, but this is no different than a change of opinion because of a book or a play or a movie. Understand that with growing technology, video games are not just repeats of Pong. It is a growing art form, where we are able to experience the lives of a military man without the psychological strain. We are able to visit other planets without a rocket. We are able to destroy hordes without ever carrying a sword. We are able to decide the fate of an entire race with the touch of a button.
This is what I’m talking about, and the game that changed me wasBioshock .
Released in 2007, the game featured an underwater city and was a first person shooter (FPS). I knew nothing more about it until Bobby Kirkpatrick brought me over to play the demo. While the game looked appealing, I was an experienced gamer, and I could see technical laggings in some parts. The game just didn’t feel up to date, and I got confused at some parts. What the demo lacked in technical achievement, it made up for in storytelling and atmosphere. The man behind it all, Andrew Ryan, had become so fed up with life on the surface. There was no escaping the guilt laden sacrificial societies that existed there.
“I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says the man in Washington it belongs to the poor. No says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God. No says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone. I rejected these answers, and instead I chose to build: Rapture. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture, can become your city as well.”
After a horrific plane crash, you are the sole survivor trapped in the massive deep of the Atlantic ocean. You turn around and suddenly you see a lighthouse. You enter the dark, but dry island and take an underwater elevator that takes you through this fantastic speech and finally to the hidden city of Rapture itself. Glory is on the horizon, but instead, horror awaits you.
From the moment you enter the city, you know something is wrong. Lunatics in party masks armed with hooks are butchering people. Screams sound in the dark. Luggage is scattered across the floor along with broken protest signs that decree, “Rapture is DEAD.” For the rest of the game, you must uncover the secrets that are hidden behind the propaganda posters and leaking pipe lines and abandoned art houses, and mutilated bodies.
Then I left my youth pastor’s house and went outside. Cars were blandly going by, my blue truck waiting as patiently as ever for me, and the sky was cloudless. Reality indeed.
Fascinated, that very same day, because I had a job, I boughtBioshock and played it immediately. What this led to was a roller coaster I could not imagine even existed. Eventually the conclusion of this game was so great, I had no choice but to do research while serving as a teacher aid for an English teacher Senior year. After a mere ten minutes, I came up with an intellectual source for the game of Bioshock : Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
“What do you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Karen Hillier, my sophomore English teacher. “She’s kind of weird”, she replied. Not good enough.“What to you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Renee Simons, my senior year English teacher.“I hate her”, she replied. Good enough for me.
While on the way to a TMEA choir concert, I bought Atlas Shrugged for $25 dollars at a Borders in a mall. The book never left my side for two more months. A whopping 1200 pages, it was awkward hauling it from class to class without a backpack. Not only that, my copy featured a naked Atlas holding up the title. People I guess somehow assumed that it was a massive gay book.
Idiots.
What it was inspired a complete way of life that changed the lens through which I perceived the whole world. I personally emailed 2K, the makers of Bioshock, and thanked them for changing my life. Since then I have read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, and own a Lexicon of her ideas by her spiritual successor Leanord Peikoff. I have watched a documentary of her life. I am reading The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand to help in possibly writing a book in the future. She is without a doubt, my favorite author.
This is why if you say, “Video Games are stupid” I will probably never listen to you ever again. And this is why I have a lot less respect for the pastor of The Village Church Matt Chandler. Matt Chandler is a man who always makes a metaphor that there are dumb men out there, and he always, ALWAYS uses video games as the medium through which he describes these dumb men. His description is paraphrased as something like this…
“There are men out there, who do nothing but play video games. You will not get better at life by playing Halo.”
And while some may be more detailed, he mentions other hobbies much less. I’m sorry Matt Chandler, you’re wrong, you’re dead wrong, but you and so many others seek to use video games as a stepping stool toward whatever agenda you need. You insult me, and you insult so many others who use my hobby by stating that the exaggerated old man who plays non-stop is every video game player to have existed, and we are supposed to feel guilty.
And this is why video games are attacked so often. It all goes back to advertising, and the fact that those shooters in Columbine also played video games. The reason why I feel bad and not bad for “Karma Police” being on Now 1 is because although it is there and my life is being sold to me, I still enjoy it, and with that I’m satisfied. The reason why people hate video games is because they assume people cannot think for themselves, and are just pushed and pulled by anything and anyone. “Those darn kids played violent games, and they just killed over a dozen students. Video Games must cause kids to kill people.”
WRONG. You’re so wrong it’s hilarious, because over a million players just got online and playedCall of Duty , a game where you kill hundreds of people an hour, and there is not mass murder in real life (except for wars, which are started by Governments and politics).
Reality sucks, and this is why. It’s because no matter what I do in life, it will not be the way I’m supposed to live it. “Buy this because the people that matter have this.” If I read Atlas Shrugged, I’m selfish. If I play video games, I’m a nerd. If I work out, I’m a juicer. If I smoke, I’m engraving my tombstone. If you ask me, I’d rather not listen to it and listen to Radiohead, even if they were on Now1. If you ask me, I’d rather watch Mad Men and wish I was there instead of here. If you ask me, I’d rather avoid all the controversy and play some damn video games.
We wake up with our music, our alarm, technologically geared to our time frame. We eat our breakfast, brand name and all, as we watch the televised imagination of our world unfold. We go to work, while smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee with a name stamped on it. We read magazines of people showing us how to live, and we do exactly what they say. We go home to watch a football game sponsored by someone with a halftime report sponsored by someone with commercials in between every first down. And while it may make my life easier, I can’t help but thinking of “Now!”
Did you know that Now! 36 has been released? It came out November 9, 2010, with hits like my personal favorite, “Dynamite” and my not so personal favorite, “Teenage Dream.” While the “Now that’s what I call Music” series has gone on internationally since 1983, it started in the U.S. with it’s first release in 1998. So you must be thinking, “how are there 36 of these when the U.S. albums are only 12 years running.” Well it’s not only for profit, but maybe there’s a whole angle we’re missing here, and finding it out may make me hate reality.
You’ll never guess what’s on the first Now unless you owned it. The only thing I guessed correctly was that it probably had a Backstreet Boys or N’Sync song. Sure enough, “As Long as you Love Me” was the number two track. Others included “Say you’ll be there” by the Spice Girls, “Zoot Suit Riot” by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.
Different times.
It is amazing how much things have changed, and it makes you give the go ahead for 36 other albums. But there’s a bit of information I’m leaving out, and it’s the information that got me thinking about reality and what it’s all about: also on Now 1 is “Karma Police” by Radiohead.
I literally put my hands on my head and pulled some hair out in sheer horror of being another sucker of the mass production of advertising. “Karma Police?” Let’s be clear: Karma Police on Radiohead’s album of Ok Computer is not the reason why I adore Radiohead. If anything I’ve heard this song maybe four or five times. Yet here it was, a song by them on the first Now.
Was I just another pawn? Another man who was played for twelve years by some back stage puppet master? In short, yes and no.
“People want to be told what to do so badly, that they’ll listen to anyone” -Don Draper
While Don may not have been right about the direction of cigarettes or television, he was most certainly right about this. In this scene, Don Draper is replying to a criticizing hippie about the evil nature of advertising. “How do you sleep at night?” the attacker questions. Don replies, “on a bed full of money.”
Don Draper’s job is not easy, but it’s probably not hard either. From the house to work and back again, people are probably going to be flooded with information. What’s the latest this? Can I get that for cheap? Will my life be better off with this? Is my family going to appreciate that? The world is full of opportunities, and wasting away all of your money on products is certainly one of them.
Media may be the middle man of my manifestation of malevolence toward material reality. It is in music with which I imagine the world. Daydreams flicker as I listen to Radiohead. Musicals are joined by me as I listen to Regina Spektor. Michael Bublé serenades me as I get into a suit and tie. Nuclear Bombs explode on the far horizon as I listen to rock music. Hindsight feels so much better after watching Mad Men. Life feels so much more satisfying when I read Ayn Rand.
I could go on, but this is but a taste of the hefty meal we are being fed in order to live on day by day.
I will give you my best and often times craziest example. My philosophy of life is based around a medium that is ridiculed and talked down to. My way of expressing my opinions is based upon something that is mocked and made fun of even at church services.
My very soul was changed because of a video game.
Video Games
You may mock me, but this is no different than a change of opinion because of a book or a play or a movie. Understand that with growing technology, video games are not just repeats of Pong. It is a growing art form, where we are able to experience the lives of a military man without the psychological strain. We are able to visit other planets without a rocket. We are able to destroy hordes without ever carrying a sword. We are able to decide the fate of an entire race with the touch of a button.
This is what I’m talking about, and the game that changed me was
Released in 2007, the game featured an underwater city and was a first person shooter (FPS). I knew nothing more about it until Bobby Kirkpatrick brought me over to play the demo. While the game looked appealing, I was an experienced gamer, and I could see technical laggings in some parts. The game just didn’t feel up to date, and I got confused at some parts. What the demo lacked in technical achievement, it made up for in storytelling and atmosphere. The man behind it all, Andrew Ryan, had become so fed up with life on the surface. There was no escaping the guilt laden sacrificial societies that existed there.
“I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says the man in Washington it belongs to the poor. No says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God. No says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone. I rejected these answers, and instead I chose to build: Rapture. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture, can become your city as well.”
After a horrific plane crash, you are the sole survivor trapped in the massive deep of the Atlantic ocean. You turn around and suddenly you see a lighthouse. You enter the dark, but dry island and take an underwater elevator that takes you through this fantastic speech and finally to the hidden city of Rapture itself. Glory is on the horizon, but instead, horror awaits you.
From the moment you enter the city, you know something is wrong. Lunatics in party masks armed with hooks are butchering people. Screams sound in the dark. Luggage is scattered across the floor along with broken protest signs that decree, “Rapture is DEAD.” For the rest of the game, you must uncover the secrets that are hidden behind the propaganda posters and leaking pipe lines and abandoned art houses, and mutilated bodies.
Then I left my youth pastor’s house and went outside. Cars were blandly going by, my blue truck waiting as patiently as ever for me, and the sky was cloudless. Reality indeed.
Fascinated, that very same day, because I had a job, I bought
“What do you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Karen Hillier, my sophomore English teacher. “She’s kind of weird”, she replied. Not good enough.“What to you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Renee Simons, my senior year English teacher.“I hate her”, she replied. Good enough for me.
While on the way to a TMEA choir concert, I bought Atlas Shrugged for $25 dollars at a Borders in a mall. The book never left my side for two more months. A whopping 1200 pages, it was awkward hauling it from class to class without a backpack. Not only that, my copy featured a naked Atlas holding up the title. People I guess somehow assumed that it was a massive gay book.
Idiots.
What it was inspired a complete way of life that changed the lens through which I perceived the whole world. I personally emailed 2K, the makers of Bioshock, and thanked them for changing my life. Since then I have read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, and own a Lexicon of her ideas by her spiritual successor Leanord Peikoff. I have watched a documentary of her life. I am reading The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand to help in possibly writing a book in the future. She is without a doubt, my favorite author.
This is why if you say, “Video Games are stupid” I will probably never listen to you ever again. And this is why I have a lot less respect for the pastor of The Village Church Matt Chandler. Matt Chandler is a man who always makes a metaphor that there are dumb men out there, and he always, ALWAYS uses video games as the medium through which he describes these dumb men. His description is paraphrased as something like this…
“There are men out there, who do nothing but play video games. You will not get better at life by playing Halo.”
And while some may be more detailed, he mentions other hobbies much less. I’m sorry Matt Chandler, you’re wrong, you’re dead wrong, but you and so many others seek to use video games as a stepping stool toward whatever agenda you need. You insult me, and you insult so many others who use my hobby by stating that the exaggerated old man who plays non-stop is every video game player to have existed, and we are supposed to feel guilty.
And this is why video games are attacked so often. It all goes back to advertising, and the fact that those shooters in Columbine also played video games. The reason why I feel bad and not bad for “Karma Police” being on Now 1 is because although it is there and my life is being sold to me, I still enjoy it, and with that I’m satisfied. The reason why people hate video games is because they assume people cannot think for themselves, and are just pushed and pulled by anything and anyone. “Those darn kids played violent games, and they just killed over a dozen students. Video Games must cause kids to kill people.”
WRONG. You’re so wrong it’s hilarious, because over a million players just got online and played
Reality sucks, and this is why. It’s because no matter what I do in life, it will not be the way I’m supposed to live it. “Buy this because the people that matter have this.” If I read Atlas Shrugged, I’m selfish. If I play video games, I’m a nerd. If I work out, I’m a juicer. If I smoke, I’m engraving my tombstone. If you ask me, I’d rather not listen to it and listen to Radiohead, even if they were on Now1. If you ask me, I’d rather watch Mad Men and wish I was there instead of here. If you ask me, I’d rather avoid all the controversy and play some damn video games.
Thoughts this Semester Part 7: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
If there was any film I watched repetitively in my childhood, here were the ones:
Star Wars
Sandlot
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
I kid you not, These VCRs must’ve been destroyed from just these cassettes. It is so interesting, but I don’t know why I clung to Who Framed Roger Rabbit so much. Star Wars makes sense, because it is pure space adventure and they made good LEGO toys, and I loved playing baseball, and I love dangerous neighbor dogs. But why Roger Rabbit?
If you haven’t seen this movie, go see it, because I’m about to talk a lot about it. It’s a movie that already starts with a great premise: “What if cartoons lived amongst us?” It came out in 1988, and it’s the only media to feature not only Daffy and Donald Duck together, but also Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse together as well. There’s no explanation, and instead we are flung onto a set with Roger Rabbit and Baby Hermann filming some hilariously overdone slapstick that I must’ve cried laughing to for hours on end. And then a flawless transition to “real life” as the director comes in and criticizes “birds” over Roger's head instead of his need for “stars”. Baby Hermann sounds like a smoking fifty year old man, and it zooms out to Eddie Valiant, the protagonist, and alcoholic.
It’s 1947, and change is on the horizon. The Red Car is becoming obsolete, and cartoons are big business. Betty Boop is all but working in low end jobs trying to make ends meet as “work’s been kind of slow since cartoons went to color.” It’s one of the most imaginative and amazing stories I’ve ever seen, because it seamlessly collides so many aspects of cartoon culture and the changing times in history. Even the end of the plot, where Toon Town was about to be destroyed by a “freeway”, is so possible, and in fact now that we have them, it is easy to assume for a child that there was once a cartoon existence.
So many memories are from this movie, and now one of my favorite lines ever in movie history is embedded in a simple hiding scene:
Valiant - That Angelo guy would rat on you for a nickel!
Rabbit - Not Angelo, he’d never turn me in…
Valiant - Why!? ‘Cause you made him laugh?
Rabbit - That’s right! A laugh can be a very important thing, why sometimes in life, it’s the only weapon we have.
Now I’m not going to go on a super serious or dark rant like I usually do, but I really must talk about this. Think about what it means for a cartoon to say this: Roger Rabbit is an invincible being (except for dip), and once drawn, is free to pursue his utmost desire from now to eternity on this earth. No need to eat, no need to sleep, and no constrains of death. For Rabbit to say this line gives so much power and humility to his character, I don’t even know if the people making this movie understand its importance. I think to them this is what cartoon characters would think, but it makes you wonder about everyone’s lives. Maybe that’s why I’m almost always up for a laugh.
But like everything in life, there are good toons and there are bad toons, and the end scene is just that. The movie starts with, “wow cartoons in real life” to being “oh God, cartoons in real life.” As soon as danger erupts, people would annihilate cartoons, no doubt about it. Can you imagine what an invincible threat would mean to everyone?
I think the name of “Who FRAMED Roger Rabbit” is interesting, because I want to think that this has a double meaning. Granted this presents a super hard-boiled plot of a literal mystery story, but I also think the word “framed” is a reference to all existence. I mean who drew Roger? Who thought him up and created him? “My whole purpose in life is to make people laugh.” It’s kind of sad, but interesting and possibly rewarding at the same time. What if you knew that was your purpose? And think about how much easier or more difficult life would be with such a simply told purpose like that. Who framed Roger Rabbit’s existence, and who framed mine? What is my purpose? I think everyone asks these questions, and we’re not even a cartoon characters.
Eddie Valiant lost his brother from a piano from fifteen stories. Those two were always cracking jokes and standing up for the justice of toons. But now his brother is gone, and all Valiant has is a decadent past and a Jack Daniels. You think he wanted this? In all likelihood, he wanted to be born a cartoon with his brother. Maybe then they could live forever, and maybe then he wouldn't have needed to watch him die so horrifically and suffer "burning red eyes." I think he saw the profound innocence of a laugh, and of the life of a cartoon who feels so light and free from the world we have to watch each day as the sun rises and sets.
In all seriousness though, this movie shaped my life. Jessica Rabbit dated the funny guy, Daffy and Donald hated each other, and Bugs Bunny would inadvertently kill you with his sarcasm if given the chance.
I hope these darn kids and their Hannah Montana’s and Justin Bieber’s and their real Suite Lives with Zach and Cody’s and their Raven’s understand the imaginative possibilities of cartoons. Unfortunately now, the only amazing cartoon show I can think of is Adventure Time, because it does just what cartoons are supposed to do: fling everyone into a fun, unreal world, so they can either appreciate, or not understand the world as it is today. This is the weapon, and this is why it’s important. Let them experience wonder and utopia, and then they will understand why atrocities on earth are named as such. And that’s why placing cartoons in real life is one of the greatest stories ever told.
A laugh indeed.
Star Wars
Sandlot
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
I kid you not, These VCRs must’ve been destroyed from just these cassettes. It is so interesting, but I don’t know why I clung to Who Framed Roger Rabbit so much. Star Wars makes sense, because it is pure space adventure and they made good LEGO toys, and I loved playing baseball, and I love dangerous neighbor dogs. But why Roger Rabbit?
If you haven’t seen this movie, go see it, because I’m about to talk a lot about it. It’s a movie that already starts with a great premise: “What if cartoons lived amongst us?” It came out in 1988, and it’s the only media to feature not only Daffy and Donald Duck together, but also Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse together as well. There’s no explanation, and instead we are flung onto a set with Roger Rabbit and Baby Hermann filming some hilariously overdone slapstick that I must’ve cried laughing to for hours on end. And then a flawless transition to “real life” as the director comes in and criticizes “birds” over Roger's head instead of his need for “stars”. Baby Hermann sounds like a smoking fifty year old man, and it zooms out to Eddie Valiant, the protagonist, and alcoholic.
It’s 1947, and change is on the horizon. The Red Car is becoming obsolete, and cartoons are big business. Betty Boop is all but working in low end jobs trying to make ends meet as “work’s been kind of slow since cartoons went to color.” It’s one of the most imaginative and amazing stories I’ve ever seen, because it seamlessly collides so many aspects of cartoon culture and the changing times in history. Even the end of the plot, where Toon Town was about to be destroyed by a “freeway”, is so possible, and in fact now that we have them, it is easy to assume for a child that there was once a cartoon existence.
So many memories are from this movie, and now one of my favorite lines ever in movie history is embedded in a simple hiding scene:
Valiant - That Angelo guy would rat on you for a nickel!
Rabbit - Not Angelo, he’d never turn me in…
Valiant - Why!? ‘Cause you made him laugh?
Rabbit - That’s right! A laugh can be a very important thing, why sometimes in life, it’s the only weapon we have.
Now I’m not going to go on a super serious or dark rant like I usually do, but I really must talk about this. Think about what it means for a cartoon to say this: Roger Rabbit is an invincible being (except for dip), and once drawn, is free to pursue his utmost desire from now to eternity on this earth. No need to eat, no need to sleep, and no constrains of death. For Rabbit to say this line gives so much power and humility to his character, I don’t even know if the people making this movie understand its importance. I think to them this is what cartoon characters would think, but it makes you wonder about everyone’s lives. Maybe that’s why I’m almost always up for a laugh.
But like everything in life, there are good toons and there are bad toons, and the end scene is just that. The movie starts with, “wow cartoons in real life” to being “oh God, cartoons in real life.” As soon as danger erupts, people would annihilate cartoons, no doubt about it. Can you imagine what an invincible threat would mean to everyone?
I think the name of “Who FRAMED Roger Rabbit” is interesting, because I want to think that this has a double meaning. Granted this presents a super hard-boiled plot of a literal mystery story, but I also think the word “framed” is a reference to all existence. I mean who drew Roger? Who thought him up and created him? “My whole purpose in life is to make people laugh.” It’s kind of sad, but interesting and possibly rewarding at the same time. What if you knew that was your purpose? And think about how much easier or more difficult life would be with such a simply told purpose like that. Who framed Roger Rabbit’s existence, and who framed mine? What is my purpose? I think everyone asks these questions, and we’re not even a cartoon characters.
Eddie Valiant lost his brother from a piano from fifteen stories. Those two were always cracking jokes and standing up for the justice of toons. But now his brother is gone, and all Valiant has is a decadent past and a Jack Daniels. You think he wanted this? In all likelihood, he wanted to be born a cartoon with his brother. Maybe then they could live forever, and maybe then he wouldn't have needed to watch him die so horrifically and suffer "burning red eyes." I think he saw the profound innocence of a laugh, and of the life of a cartoon who feels so light and free from the world we have to watch each day as the sun rises and sets.
In all seriousness though, this movie shaped my life. Jessica Rabbit dated the funny guy, Daffy and Donald hated each other, and Bugs Bunny would inadvertently kill you with his sarcasm if given the chance.
I hope these darn kids and their Hannah Montana’s and Justin Bieber’s and their real Suite Lives with Zach and Cody’s and their Raven’s understand the imaginative possibilities of cartoons. Unfortunately now, the only amazing cartoon show I can think of is Adventure Time, because it does just what cartoons are supposed to do: fling everyone into a fun, unreal world, so they can either appreciate, or not understand the world as it is today. This is the weapon, and this is why it’s important. Let them experience wonder and utopia, and then they will understand why atrocities on earth are named as such. And that’s why placing cartoons in real life is one of the greatest stories ever told.
A laugh indeed.
Thoughts this Semester Part 6: Training and Justice
Who am I Fighting?
Before I could barely reason, I was in school. Training for the day that I would drop onto Earth and fight heroically in the struggle for intelligence. I was good at what I did, and I became the true soldier. I fought valiantly for my country, and when I lost grades, I wept as though they were that close to me. I did everything right.
But then I faltered, became immature, died as a student. Ever since junior high, grades were not what they were those first campaigns. Production slowed, tactics went stale, and strategy went unchecked. I was lacking in my training. By high school I was a true smart ass. Wising off and making jokes and even being angry to my mother. Lines were crossed, and I came back just in time for High School. The training that life was leading me all culminated to high school. The little league sports, the Pre-AP classes, the bad social skills, all formed one large invasion to Friendswood High School.
I landed with what I thought would be mass opposition. There was very little, and once again, I became more lax in my intellectual fight. I suddenly became a soldier of occupation. Dull, bored, unenlightened and uninterested. Instead, the internal fight of age was growing, and soon I was becoming more and more of a human being, both inside and out. I was learning things and seeing things I could no longer ignore, turn my back on. I could no longer shield myself from the brutal realities of pain and suffering, but could not help but jump into the pleasures and sensations of imagination. With the battle over Europe being senior year, it was over, but the war in the Pacific was just getting started.
Now I understand these happened simultaneously, but bear with me. With the big fish in the little pond secured, I moved to the ocean, and I couldn’t be helped but be swept away. So much current and so much deep, I lost everything I had gained. The enemy had ambushed me, and I was back to square one. I counted all my resources in hand and managed to remain ahead, but only by a little, but something larger was growing inside me. The one fear of combat was beginning to boil, and everyone has their breaking point.
It’s been 21 years. A third of my life to this point (trust me I don't want to live past 63). The war is still going on, and I’m on Peleliu. One of the bloodiest conflicts ever underestimated by anyone in the history of mankind. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch the Pacific.
It’s here, and I’m fighting. Turning in massive essays, listening to online lectures, doing research. Taking massive artillery and still alive to fight another day. But the days are now stacking. If I’m to even make it through the war, it’ll be a long shot. Each day is long now. “Did you know that molecules are easily destroyed…”, it all goes in and out. All teachers receive is a blank stare. If they were to look straight at me, they would see a man staring at his hands. In sheer horror, they would see me gawk at myself, wondering “what am I?” The war of school has turned me into a monster, that does nothing but spit out line after line from nothing that’s his. I have become a shell, the man with the rifle. Who do you want me to kill? What do you want me to learn? I’ll do whatever it takes. I'd shoot a man just to watch him bleed. I'd run a mile if it meant a fight. Tear my heat out, as long as I can kill something. As long as I can teach history.
???
Is this what it really boils down to? 21 years to teach high school history? If that’s the case, I can laugh darkly and exclaim, “I really am a monster.” Because I’ve been shaped and molded into something terrible. Six years of Spanish and I’m afraid to put it on my résumé. I heard the best lecture of my life this semester, and if it were to happen again, I would not even blink. I would not even acknowledge his presence. Sure the notes would be on my paper, but I would just walk away. Waiting for the next test.
Waiting for the next battle.
Every day I wake up and think I was born to do something great. Now I don’t even know if I’ll make it out alive.
Justice
In all discussions of Christianity, nothing can be more prominent or serious than salvation and justice. We all like to think there’s a heaven, and we all like to think we are going there. In all terrible things done to us, we hope that God will one day punish those who are wicked for those that do good. As such it is interesting that we do not think on this subject more in our lives. In our minds, we must think that there is not much to it. We do not judge, but God does, and the wicked will die, and the good will live. Unfortunately for me, this isn’t quite the same on paper.
Black and White
Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and it is here that we are broken, and live in sin until Jesus came and saved us by dying on the Cross.
If you believed that you are nothing without Jesus, and it is only through him that they are saved, then you are going to heaven. If you do not, you will surely die in hell.
Yet somehow works comes into this, I guess. Works define a man’s heart, but they do not affect his entrance to heaven.
Even if you live a good life, do all the right things, make all the right motions, and never hurt another soul, you will go to hell, which makes the Great Commission that much more important.
Gray
Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and it is here that we are broken, and live in sin until Jesus came and saved us by dying on the Cross.
If you believe that you are nothing without Jesus and it is only through him that salvation comes than you will surely go to heaven. If you don’t, then you might go to hell?
Works do affect your entrance. But it is said in the Bible that believing is all it takes right? In James it says that works shows a man’s heart, but isn’t that a glaring contradiction?
This is so baffling to me, I have never gotten my mind around it.
Belief in Jesus --> Works --> Salvation --> Belief in Jesus?
Is that how it works? Okay so works don’t matter, but they do, I say this because…
What do I say to the good man? You know, the man who does not believe that Jesus died for us, but still lives a good life. This is the part where I tell him, “we all fall short of the glory of God, and none of us live the life that can achieve salvation.” Oh I’m sorry sir, it does, it really does, because to say this makes any hope of a moral compass disentegrate.
I’m losing my mind just typing this out. So if works do matter, is there a ranking of heaven?
Heaven
-Christians who do good works and believe wholeheartedly
-Christians who believe, but do not do “good works”. They live neutrally?
???
-People who do “good works” but do not believe that Jesus died for us
Hell
-People who do not do good works, and do not believe that Jesus is the son of God
Apparently the road to heaven is wider than ever. This is why I’m so baffled. This is why I do not understand why we don’t discuss this further. Am I missing the point? Would I rather get in by a long shot, than get in by a nose? But I’m still in right?
This is the part where people say, “you need to stop thinking about this, or you’ll lose your mind.” I’m sorry but you’re wrong, you’re very wrong, and it is because when I get to heaven and I’m before God, like everyone else, it will be a one sided jury and judge. Whatever heinous crimes I did, I did it in his house.
Do you really think I have any evidence against the creator of the universe? Do you really think I have some Ace in Hole card that’ll get me through. Even if I were to believe with all my heart that Jesus died for me, and did all the good I could in this world, God could still send me to hell, and I would have no defense. I mean why not? You’re not going to contradict the Almighty. Isn’t that scary?
So what do I say to the man that makes all the right motions. I would probably say to him, “if you want to get on the train, you might as well buy a ticket, so you can get on. Then you can load people’s luggage for them like you’ve always done.”
Can I really say that? Using eternal salvation as a “get out of jail free” card?
And this is the result: a confused and strained Christian who doesn’t know how to spread the gospel. I don’t even know if I’m going to make it, because I don’t know if I should go back and be a Young Life leader because it’s on the checklist of “good works”, or if truly in my heart I’ll make the cut. I would quite literally fall apart if God said, “this isn’t going to work out.” and literally fired me. Unemployed, in the dark, without an answer or a reason, because as king of the universe, he does not owe anyone answers.
Does no one else think about this? Sometimes I feel like I’m the worst man ever, because I’m constantly putting Christianity on trial. But it’s okay to have doubts or wonder right?
I’m sorry, but it’s not, it’s not okay. This is what frightens me the most. This is what makes me so scared and sad, and this is what makes me so angry.
Before I could barely reason, I was in school. Training for the day that I would drop onto Earth and fight heroically in the struggle for intelligence. I was good at what I did, and I became the true soldier. I fought valiantly for my country, and when I lost grades, I wept as though they were that close to me. I did everything right.
But then I faltered, became immature, died as a student. Ever since junior high, grades were not what they were those first campaigns. Production slowed, tactics went stale, and strategy went unchecked. I was lacking in my training. By high school I was a true smart ass. Wising off and making jokes and even being angry to my mother. Lines were crossed, and I came back just in time for High School. The training that life was leading me all culminated to high school. The little league sports, the Pre-AP classes, the bad social skills, all formed one large invasion to Friendswood High School.
I landed with what I thought would be mass opposition. There was very little, and once again, I became more lax in my intellectual fight. I suddenly became a soldier of occupation. Dull, bored, unenlightened and uninterested. Instead, the internal fight of age was growing, and soon I was becoming more and more of a human being, both inside and out. I was learning things and seeing things I could no longer ignore, turn my back on. I could no longer shield myself from the brutal realities of pain and suffering, but could not help but jump into the pleasures and sensations of imagination. With the battle over Europe being senior year, it was over, but the war in the Pacific was just getting started.
Now I understand these happened simultaneously, but bear with me. With the big fish in the little pond secured, I moved to the ocean, and I couldn’t be helped but be swept away. So much current and so much deep, I lost everything I had gained. The enemy had ambushed me, and I was back to square one. I counted all my resources in hand and managed to remain ahead, but only by a little, but something larger was growing inside me. The one fear of combat was beginning to boil, and everyone has their breaking point.
It’s been 21 years. A third of my life to this point (trust me I don't want to live past 63). The war is still going on, and I’m on Peleliu. One of the bloodiest conflicts ever underestimated by anyone in the history of mankind. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch the Pacific.
It’s here, and I’m fighting. Turning in massive essays, listening to online lectures, doing research. Taking massive artillery and still alive to fight another day. But the days are now stacking. If I’m to even make it through the war, it’ll be a long shot. Each day is long now. “Did you know that molecules are easily destroyed…”, it all goes in and out. All teachers receive is a blank stare. If they were to look straight at me, they would see a man staring at his hands. In sheer horror, they would see me gawk at myself, wondering “what am I?” The war of school has turned me into a monster, that does nothing but spit out line after line from nothing that’s his. I have become a shell, the man with the rifle. Who do you want me to kill? What do you want me to learn? I’ll do whatever it takes. I'd shoot a man just to watch him bleed. I'd run a mile if it meant a fight. Tear my heat out, as long as I can kill something. As long as I can teach history.
???
Is this what it really boils down to? 21 years to teach high school history? If that’s the case, I can laugh darkly and exclaim, “I really am a monster.” Because I’ve been shaped and molded into something terrible. Six years of Spanish and I’m afraid to put it on my résumé. I heard the best lecture of my life this semester, and if it were to happen again, I would not even blink. I would not even acknowledge his presence. Sure the notes would be on my paper, but I would just walk away. Waiting for the next test.
Waiting for the next battle.
Every day I wake up and think I was born to do something great. Now I don’t even know if I’ll make it out alive.
Justice
In all discussions of Christianity, nothing can be more prominent or serious than salvation and justice. We all like to think there’s a heaven, and we all like to think we are going there. In all terrible things done to us, we hope that God will one day punish those who are wicked for those that do good. As such it is interesting that we do not think on this subject more in our lives. In our minds, we must think that there is not much to it. We do not judge, but God does, and the wicked will die, and the good will live. Unfortunately for me, this isn’t quite the same on paper.
Black and White
Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and it is here that we are broken, and live in sin until Jesus came and saved us by dying on the Cross.
If you believed that you are nothing without Jesus, and it is only through him that they are saved, then you are going to heaven. If you do not, you will surely die in hell.
Yet somehow works comes into this, I guess. Works define a man’s heart, but they do not affect his entrance to heaven.
Even if you live a good life, do all the right things, make all the right motions, and never hurt another soul, you will go to hell, which makes the Great Commission that much more important.
Gray
Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and it is here that we are broken, and live in sin until Jesus came and saved us by dying on the Cross.
If you believe that you are nothing without Jesus and it is only through him that salvation comes than you will surely go to heaven. If you don’t, then you might go to hell?
Works do affect your entrance. But it is said in the Bible that believing is all it takes right? In James it says that works shows a man’s heart, but isn’t that a glaring contradiction?
This is so baffling to me, I have never gotten my mind around it.
Belief in Jesus --> Works --> Salvation --> Belief in Jesus?
Is that how it works? Okay so works don’t matter, but they do, I say this because…
What do I say to the good man? You know, the man who does not believe that Jesus died for us, but still lives a good life. This is the part where I tell him, “we all fall short of the glory of God, and none of us live the life that can achieve salvation.” Oh I’m sorry sir, it does, it really does, because to say this makes any hope of a moral compass disentegrate.
I’m losing my mind just typing this out. So if works do matter, is there a ranking of heaven?
Heaven
-Christians who do good works and believe wholeheartedly
-Christians who believe, but do not do “good works”. They live neutrally?
???
-People who do “good works” but do not believe that Jesus died for us
Hell
-People who do not do good works, and do not believe that Jesus is the son of God
Apparently the road to heaven is wider than ever. This is why I’m so baffled. This is why I do not understand why we don’t discuss this further. Am I missing the point? Would I rather get in by a long shot, than get in by a nose? But I’m still in right?
This is the part where people say, “you need to stop thinking about this, or you’ll lose your mind.” I’m sorry but you’re wrong, you’re very wrong, and it is because when I get to heaven and I’m before God, like everyone else, it will be a one sided jury and judge. Whatever heinous crimes I did, I did it in his house.
Do you really think I have any evidence against the creator of the universe? Do you really think I have some Ace in Hole card that’ll get me through. Even if I were to believe with all my heart that Jesus died for me, and did all the good I could in this world, God could still send me to hell, and I would have no defense. I mean why not? You’re not going to contradict the Almighty. Isn’t that scary?
So what do I say to the man that makes all the right motions. I would probably say to him, “if you want to get on the train, you might as well buy a ticket, so you can get on. Then you can load people’s luggage for them like you’ve always done.”
Can I really say that? Using eternal salvation as a “get out of jail free” card?
And this is the result: a confused and strained Christian who doesn’t know how to spread the gospel. I don’t even know if I’m going to make it, because I don’t know if I should go back and be a Young Life leader because it’s on the checklist of “good works”, or if truly in my heart I’ll make the cut. I would quite literally fall apart if God said, “this isn’t going to work out.” and literally fired me. Unemployed, in the dark, without an answer or a reason, because as king of the universe, he does not owe anyone answers.
Does no one else think about this? Sometimes I feel like I’m the worst man ever, because I’m constantly putting Christianity on trial. But it’s okay to have doubts or wonder right?
I’m sorry, but it’s not, it’s not okay. This is what frightens me the most. This is what makes me so scared and sad, and this is what makes me so angry.
Thoughts this Semester Part 5: Matter
I feel so heavy
I feel like iron, and it’s oxidizing so fast that I can’t cleanse it before it surrounds me, before it collapses every good thing I’ve ever tried to do. 155 pounds for six years, but my soul feels like thousands. You drop me into the ocean and I would sink. I would sink so fast you would only get one last glimpse at the top of my head before the navy blue fringe bleeds my skin invisible. And there I’ll sit, until some scuba diver hundreds of years later realizes what they left behind. I feel like the clogged air filter, and when you shake me, dust and muck and filth fly out and it’ll make you turn away and cough and gag. Everything I’ve done is collected and gathered and is never forgotten. No one ever forgets, and I never forget. It’s not hard to be in history, because everyone remembers everyone.
I feel like I’m on the social teeter totter. So many friends and so many beliefs and so many wants and desires that every move I make will lessen my friendship with one and gain it with another. I feel so dangerously destructive I wonder what makes me able to even go out into the playground. Propaganda floods my mind and I wonder where to go. The Corporation is nothing but greedy, but the environmentalist wants you dead anyway. Light on topics and history cascade through the North Texas roof and burn out any attempt at opinion. You’re left as another computer, reciting text you thought was your own when it is nothing more than regurgitated statistics and plot points. I’m just as guilty as the next man, and I have nothing to show for it.
I surround myself with cynicism, and it’s slowly destroying any hope of a good life. I seek to steal what is not mine, and if I’m not satisfied, I criticize you for ever making any choice in the world.
I am terrified.
And I have no excuse. The golden generation had World War II, the next had Korea, the next Vietnam and the 70s, and here I am. So much plenty. Laptops, cell phones, face book, time, parties, drawings, movies, paintings, “social lives”. I have no excuse.
Will the world ever know what sacrifices Colton Royle made in his life? No, because he made no sacrifices, and he never took the initiative. He IS the teeter totter, carrying with him anyone who wants to grasp for the middle way, for compromise.
Matter. We are all it, and surrounded by it. It can be bent to your will with the right tools, but it can’t be created or destroyed.
No one ever forgets.
Is history matter? Can it weigh down the teeter totter? Can it save a man from sinking? Is history created or destroyed, or is it just a regurgitation? Is it a concentrated and gathered rerun? Am I no different from any man who walked this Earth? I’m just as awful, and heavy, and I’m sinking just as fast. Gravity will take over and everything I’ve thrown in the air will come crashing down around me. All I’ve done with this terrible cynicism is hurt anyone and everyone.
I’m the perpetual interrogated man who cracks at the breaking point. Either no man, or every man feels like I do. The law abiding citizen that will eventually break every law, because of the absolute knowledge that nothing is absolute. I am condemned at anyone’s discretion and am subjected to anyone’s punishment. I am essential to no one and everyone; to the public good and to myself at the same time.
How do you divide that? How is the matter divided? How is a law subjected to the dividing destruction of human perspective?
I want Radiohead to play at my funeral. I want Regina Spektor to hold and tell me “it’s alright” when “I never ever saw it coming at all.” I want Ayn Rand to hold evidence that everything I do is okay. I want travel back to the 1960s and meet Don Draper. I want to be an architect, I want to run a railroad. “I’m the Hero of this story, I don’t need to be saved.”
Charging the phone, charging the laptop, charging the mind
Glasses and contacts, pens and pencils, music and movies, life and death.
Matter and anti-matter
There’s a drawing of a child on a boat in my room, and forever he will stare out to the right of the page. The two dimensional child. The boat will never move, the child will never blink. He will be infinite.
And I will leave him to his forever fate. I will move on, to something else.
Matter and anti-matter.
No one ever forgets.
Really. People always seem to remember the early hat throw of Colton at graduation.
Neither created nor destroyed. What does it mean? Equal trade? The teeter totter? History? It certainly seems to have nothing to do with me.
And yet here I am. Nowhere and everywhere. Created, and destroyed. Matter and anti-matter, history and re-run. And I feel so heavy.
I feel like iron, and it’s oxidizing so fast that I can’t cleanse it before it surrounds me, before it collapses every good thing I’ve ever tried to do. 155 pounds for six years, but my soul feels like thousands. You drop me into the ocean and I would sink. I would sink so fast you would only get one last glimpse at the top of my head before the navy blue fringe bleeds my skin invisible. And there I’ll sit, until some scuba diver hundreds of years later realizes what they left behind. I feel like the clogged air filter, and when you shake me, dust and muck and filth fly out and it’ll make you turn away and cough and gag. Everything I’ve done is collected and gathered and is never forgotten. No one ever forgets, and I never forget. It’s not hard to be in history, because everyone remembers everyone.
I feel like I’m on the social teeter totter. So many friends and so many beliefs and so many wants and desires that every move I make will lessen my friendship with one and gain it with another. I feel so dangerously destructive I wonder what makes me able to even go out into the playground. Propaganda floods my mind and I wonder where to go. The Corporation is nothing but greedy, but the environmentalist wants you dead anyway. Light on topics and history cascade through the North Texas roof and burn out any attempt at opinion. You’re left as another computer, reciting text you thought was your own when it is nothing more than regurgitated statistics and plot points. I’m just as guilty as the next man, and I have nothing to show for it.
I surround myself with cynicism, and it’s slowly destroying any hope of a good life. I seek to steal what is not mine, and if I’m not satisfied, I criticize you for ever making any choice in the world.
I am terrified.
And I have no excuse. The golden generation had World War II, the next had Korea, the next Vietnam and the 70s, and here I am. So much plenty. Laptops, cell phones, face book, time, parties, drawings, movies, paintings, “social lives”. I have no excuse.
Will the world ever know what sacrifices Colton Royle made in his life? No, because he made no sacrifices, and he never took the initiative. He IS the teeter totter, carrying with him anyone who wants to grasp for the middle way, for compromise.
Matter. We are all it, and surrounded by it. It can be bent to your will with the right tools, but it can’t be created or destroyed.
No one ever forgets.
Is history matter? Can it weigh down the teeter totter? Can it save a man from sinking? Is history created or destroyed, or is it just a regurgitation? Is it a concentrated and gathered rerun? Am I no different from any man who walked this Earth? I’m just as awful, and heavy, and I’m sinking just as fast. Gravity will take over and everything I’ve thrown in the air will come crashing down around me. All I’ve done with this terrible cynicism is hurt anyone and everyone.
I’m the perpetual interrogated man who cracks at the breaking point. Either no man, or every man feels like I do. The law abiding citizen that will eventually break every law, because of the absolute knowledge that nothing is absolute. I am condemned at anyone’s discretion and am subjected to anyone’s punishment. I am essential to no one and everyone; to the public good and to myself at the same time.
How do you divide that? How is the matter divided? How is a law subjected to the dividing destruction of human perspective?
I want Radiohead to play at my funeral. I want Regina Spektor to hold and tell me “it’s alright” when “I never ever saw it coming at all.” I want Ayn Rand to hold evidence that everything I do is okay. I want travel back to the 1960s and meet Don Draper. I want to be an architect, I want to run a railroad. “I’m the Hero of this story, I don’t need to be saved.”
Charging the phone, charging the laptop, charging the mind
Glasses and contacts, pens and pencils, music and movies, life and death.
Matter and anti-matter
There’s a drawing of a child on a boat in my room, and forever he will stare out to the right of the page. The two dimensional child. The boat will never move, the child will never blink. He will be infinite.
And I will leave him to his forever fate. I will move on, to something else.
Matter and anti-matter.
No one ever forgets.
Really. People always seem to remember the early hat throw of Colton at graduation.
Neither created nor destroyed. What does it mean? Equal trade? The teeter totter? History? It certainly seems to have nothing to do with me.
And yet here I am. Nowhere and everywhere. Created, and destroyed. Matter and anti-matter, history and re-run. And I feel so heavy.
Thoughts this Semester Part 4: While you were Out
Space
While you were out watching the World Series, I was thinking about space. Until jr. high, I was quite certain I wanted to be an astronomer. I had read all the books in the wedgewood elementary school library. I knew, and still know by heart that Pluto takes 248 years to revolve around the sun while mercury takes a mere 88 days. I know that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is three Earth’s wide and that the Sun is 93 million miles away, but only takes light 8 minutes to reach Earth. I know that in fact it is better if Pluto was not considered a planet because of it’s odd revolution and because of similar surrounding bodies.
Space has always fascinated me, because there is no more west. It literally was “the final frontier”. Of course realizing that astronomers don’t do as much as I thought sooner or later in sophomore year of high school I decided I’d teach history instead, but the thoughts of the stars has never left my mind. I took a solar system class freshman year and I’m taking Stars and the Galaxies now. It’s the last gasp attempt to quench the spatial thirst of the unknown. I am left heartbroken sometimes by how bad the teachers are. My teacher is not even primarily an astronomical man. He’s a mathematician, I suppose they needed him for more astronomy classes. Of course in order to confirm astronomy as a level science to anything else like physics, or biology, then huge equations are needed. I’ve never had a problem with quantifying the universe, but what has this done to the modern age? You know most people don’t look at stars anymore. Most of us can’t. So much light pollution has shifted our eyes so much that only a handful are visible. Imagine thousands of years ago on a moonless, lightless night what our ancestors saw. Combine this with incredible knowledge of the universe and all hope is lost for science fiction. One of my favorite genres (if not my most favorite) in film making is science fiction, because it combines the unknown to systematic true to life attempts to explain those phenomena. And while Star Wars is considered a Space Opera, it is still an incredible experience. But what has science fiction become now. Narrow? Complicated? Confusing? Sure, to some, but still intriguing to others. But the damage has been done.
Let’s look at the “dogfights” in Star Wars. Now most of these fighter on fighter scenarios seem to transfer aerial combat to space, which is a total lie. In the case of a vacuum, what is the point of wings? The entire Rebel Alliance has named their ships with a letter and the corresponding word “wing” but these are not necessary in space. X-wing, Y-wing, A-wing, and B-wing. Now you could say that they are entering and leaving atmospheres, but they still follow the same principles of turning and ducking and weaving in space. So now we have dogfights in space. When Wedge Antilles and the Rebel Alliance take on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, all hell breaks loose when Admiral Ackbar so famously cries, “IT’S A TRAP!” Star Destroyers have opened their hanger bays and tie fighters and interceptors (new design) have come storming out. Now here come the dogfights, but here’s the problem. Say Wedge is being shot at from “behind” (we’re in space of course) by a tie fighter. What’s the most obvious thing to do in aerial fights. Well he could “do a barrel roll” or he could loop over and around, or he could S-right or S-left repeatedly until he lost the enemy or got behind him. But what’s the obvious thing to do in a vacuum? Rotate the ship using air pods and shoot him.
Now you gotta think about this…
Just because he is behind him, does not mean he is in that big of danger. A vacuum implies no air resistance, and with that Wedge Antilles could rotate his X-Wing (while moving forward!) and now be moving in reverse but is now facing the tie fighter. Bam Bam! No more tie fighter. Kind of takes all the tension out of the movie right?
For more information on this, read this…
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html
Now I’m only using an extreme case in Star Wars. No one really cares because Star Wars was never trying to be realistic. Star Trek might be a little different. The bottom line is, is now Space Opera’s are very hard to do with so much scientific knowledge. There are no “Endors” or “Hoths” or “Tatooine” worlds out there. The closest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri. Even if you were traveling at light speed, (which is impossible for objects with mass as light speed is considered pure energy) then it would take you 4.37 years to even get there! To go any faster would possibly bend the mechanics of space-time itself. After the moon landings in 1969, mankind thought there was nothing that was impossible. People pictured space colonies, lunar bases, space naval platforms, it was a great environment. But then the data started to come in. Science of the sheer scope of the universe came into picture, and now somehow NASA was not the same as it was then. Indeed until cryogenic sleep is invented or until people are willing to live on a ship for 200 years, we might never see another planet, save maybe Mars. Mars does not even have anything worthwhile. It’s atmosphere is too thin, and it’s environment is too harsh. What’s the point?
Indeed what is the point. Science has concluded that most everything out there is indifferent matter, following the clockwork that has been the universe for millions upon millions of years. And now people have become so separated with this truth, or depressed by it, that we’ve stopped looking at the “fireflies that got stuck up…in that…big bluish black thing”.
This truth has never deterred me from the love of space, but it has brought a different perspective upon mankind. Astronomy does not exist for most on a large scale, but it does exist closer to home.
Mankind no longer looks at stars, we look at skyscrapers.
They are so majestic, and tall, and they are easy to approach and behold. Streetlights are beautiful at night. There’s so many different colors. You got flourescent white dwarfs, you’ve got Red Giant stoplights, and you’ve got the standard incandescent suns. We especially have named them. There’s the “Well’s Fargo ATM” star, and there’s the “Jack in the Box” system ahead. We are approaching the “Cowboy’s Stadium” galaxy. And while the infinitely more distant lights have died out, we have not blinked once. Asteroids are now space ships that zoom by, because there are so much more of those than in the far reaches of the unknown. And when they collide, it means so much more because we were the pilots of such matter.
I watched a special for homework in my Astronomy class called, “Secrets of the Universe: the Sun”. I was exceptionally excited because I was hoping they would mention man attempting to recreate the fusion present in the light that powers our world. Can you imagine? Little suns performing fusion and providing us with limitless energy? Incredible. With that kind of power, space colonies really would be possible. What I watched was more doomsday crap. All the ways the sun can kill us, and we should be afraid because THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. What baffled me was when they said, “we have people on the case”. So that when a massive solar flare fires straight towards Earth, we will be ready in the mere 18 hours it gives us. Of course I can see why they are paid. Some solar flares are minor but can disrupt satellites and since The United States has 56 satellites up there, they might want to turn those off so they don’t short circuit. Does the Discovery and History Channel think we are so stupid that they have to include some kind of massive cataclysmic death scene so that we get excited to watch it? Is that what entertainment has become? “I love space because there are so many ways to die by it.” ???
Is giving up on space and building stars on earth bad? No, but I do believe that dreaming about space instead of doomsday aliens and solar flares is essential. I think that’s what inspired the moon landings in general.
“We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” -John F. Kennedy
Do you really think that astronauts were going to find something extraordinary on the rock that orbits the rock? No, but it was a dream since forever to have a man wave back from whence he came separated by the vacuum of the dangerous and distant.
While you were out watching the World Series, I was thinking about space. Until jr. high, I was quite certain I wanted to be an astronomer. I had read all the books in the wedgewood elementary school library. I knew, and still know by heart that Pluto takes 248 years to revolve around the sun while mercury takes a mere 88 days. I know that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is three Earth’s wide and that the Sun is 93 million miles away, but only takes light 8 minutes to reach Earth. I know that in fact it is better if Pluto was not considered a planet because of it’s odd revolution and because of similar surrounding bodies.
Space has always fascinated me, because there is no more west. It literally was “the final frontier”. Of course realizing that astronomers don’t do as much as I thought sooner or later in sophomore year of high school I decided I’d teach history instead, but the thoughts of the stars has never left my mind. I took a solar system class freshman year and I’m taking Stars and the Galaxies now. It’s the last gasp attempt to quench the spatial thirst of the unknown. I am left heartbroken sometimes by how bad the teachers are. My teacher is not even primarily an astronomical man. He’s a mathematician, I suppose they needed him for more astronomy classes. Of course in order to confirm astronomy as a level science to anything else like physics, or biology, then huge equations are needed. I’ve never had a problem with quantifying the universe, but what has this done to the modern age? You know most people don’t look at stars anymore. Most of us can’t. So much light pollution has shifted our eyes so much that only a handful are visible. Imagine thousands of years ago on a moonless, lightless night what our ancestors saw. Combine this with incredible knowledge of the universe and all hope is lost for science fiction. One of my favorite genres (if not my most favorite) in film making is science fiction, because it combines the unknown to systematic true to life attempts to explain those phenomena. And while Star Wars is considered a Space Opera, it is still an incredible experience. But what has science fiction become now. Narrow? Complicated? Confusing? Sure, to some, but still intriguing to others. But the damage has been done.
Let’s look at the “dogfights” in Star Wars. Now most of these fighter on fighter scenarios seem to transfer aerial combat to space, which is a total lie. In the case of a vacuum, what is the point of wings? The entire Rebel Alliance has named their ships with a letter and the corresponding word “wing” but these are not necessary in space. X-wing, Y-wing, A-wing, and B-wing. Now you could say that they are entering and leaving atmospheres, but they still follow the same principles of turning and ducking and weaving in space. So now we have dogfights in space. When Wedge Antilles and the Rebel Alliance take on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, all hell breaks loose when Admiral Ackbar so famously cries, “IT’S A TRAP!” Star Destroyers have opened their hanger bays and tie fighters and interceptors (new design) have come storming out. Now here come the dogfights, but here’s the problem. Say Wedge is being shot at from “behind” (we’re in space of course) by a tie fighter. What’s the most obvious thing to do in aerial fights. Well he could “do a barrel roll” or he could loop over and around, or he could S-right or S-left repeatedly until he lost the enemy or got behind him. But what’s the obvious thing to do in a vacuum? Rotate the ship using air pods and shoot him.
Now you gotta think about this…
Just because he is behind him, does not mean he is in that big of danger. A vacuum implies no air resistance, and with that Wedge Antilles could rotate his X-Wing (while moving forward!) and now be moving in reverse but is now facing the tie fighter. Bam Bam! No more tie fighter. Kind of takes all the tension out of the movie right?
For more information on this, read this…
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html
Now I’m only using an extreme case in Star Wars. No one really cares because Star Wars was never trying to be realistic. Star Trek might be a little different. The bottom line is, is now Space Opera’s are very hard to do with so much scientific knowledge. There are no “Endors” or “Hoths” or “Tatooine” worlds out there. The closest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri. Even if you were traveling at light speed, (which is impossible for objects with mass as light speed is considered pure energy) then it would take you 4.37 years to even get there! To go any faster would possibly bend the mechanics of space-time itself. After the moon landings in 1969, mankind thought there was nothing that was impossible. People pictured space colonies, lunar bases, space naval platforms, it was a great environment. But then the data started to come in. Science of the sheer scope of the universe came into picture, and now somehow NASA was not the same as it was then. Indeed until cryogenic sleep is invented or until people are willing to live on a ship for 200 years, we might never see another planet, save maybe Mars. Mars does not even have anything worthwhile. It’s atmosphere is too thin, and it’s environment is too harsh. What’s the point?
Indeed what is the point. Science has concluded that most everything out there is indifferent matter, following the clockwork that has been the universe for millions upon millions of years. And now people have become so separated with this truth, or depressed by it, that we’ve stopped looking at the “fireflies that got stuck up…in that…big bluish black thing”.
This truth has never deterred me from the love of space, but it has brought a different perspective upon mankind. Astronomy does not exist for most on a large scale, but it does exist closer to home.
Mankind no longer looks at stars, we look at skyscrapers.
They are so majestic, and tall, and they are easy to approach and behold. Streetlights are beautiful at night. There’s so many different colors. You got flourescent white dwarfs, you’ve got Red Giant stoplights, and you’ve got the standard incandescent suns. We especially have named them. There’s the “Well’s Fargo ATM” star, and there’s the “Jack in the Box” system ahead. We are approaching the “Cowboy’s Stadium” galaxy. And while the infinitely more distant lights have died out, we have not blinked once. Asteroids are now space ships that zoom by, because there are so much more of those than in the far reaches of the unknown. And when they collide, it means so much more because we were the pilots of such matter.
I watched a special for homework in my Astronomy class called, “Secrets of the Universe: the Sun”. I was exceptionally excited because I was hoping they would mention man attempting to recreate the fusion present in the light that powers our world. Can you imagine? Little suns performing fusion and providing us with limitless energy? Incredible. With that kind of power, space colonies really would be possible. What I watched was more doomsday crap. All the ways the sun can kill us, and we should be afraid because THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. What baffled me was when they said, “we have people on the case”. So that when a massive solar flare fires straight towards Earth, we will be ready in the mere 18 hours it gives us. Of course I can see why they are paid. Some solar flares are minor but can disrupt satellites and since The United States has 56 satellites up there, they might want to turn those off so they don’t short circuit. Does the Discovery and History Channel think we are so stupid that they have to include some kind of massive cataclysmic death scene so that we get excited to watch it? Is that what entertainment has become? “I love space because there are so many ways to die by it.” ???
Is giving up on space and building stars on earth bad? No, but I do believe that dreaming about space instead of doomsday aliens and solar flares is essential. I think that’s what inspired the moon landings in general.
“We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” -John F. Kennedy
Do you really think that astronauts were going to find something extraordinary on the rock that orbits the rock? No, but it was a dream since forever to have a man wave back from whence he came separated by the vacuum of the dangerous and distant.
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