Birthday

Tomorrow is my 22nd birthday. How lame is that?

Miss

You know what I miss? Ska. And hackey sack. And wallet chains.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish!

Fuck You, I'm Italian!

Resident Evil

My roommates and I have been absorbed in the Resident Evil games for the past few weeks. I just finished Resident Evil 4 and have moved on to Zero, while one of my roommates is playing the remake of the original, and the other is struggling with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

The Resident Evil games are excellent. They are sometimes genuinely creepy and scary while at the same time being campy and overdone. And the storylines are pretty twisted, complicated, and intertwined (except for 4 where some characters from previous games all coincidentally happen to find themselves halfway around the world in a situation where a completely different town has been overrun by zombies).

It's a shame that the movies couldn't have been a better reflection of the games. First of all, they didn't seem as dark and grimy as the video games, or as nearly claustrophobic and lonely. And there were too many bullets and not enough puzzles. In the games again, except for RE4, in the games the player had to conserve ammo and solve lots of puzzles (that were surprisingly and intricately incorporated into seemingly normal mansions, laboratories, and police stations). But seeing as puzzles are interactive and movies are not, perhaps it's best they left this out. And while the movies had pretty good plot twists, it lacked suspense. This is not to say that these were bad movies, but they just weren't very reminiscent of the games.

Addicted to You

Stellar: http://www.grab.com/games/play.php?game=197&fromint=1
Stellar: I'm becoming addicted to this game
Cynical McBastard: looks lame
Stellar: It LOOKS lame. So did the Fishy game before you got hooked
Stellar: You looked lame at first too, but I got addicted to you :)
Cynical McBastard: haha

It's a Trick!

My cat has been really nice to me today, making me think that he's probably going to kill me tonight and dine upon my flesh.

Classy

• I'm drinking apple juice out of a champagne glass.
• I have been carrying a spoon in my pocket for half of the day.
• My cat made a huge mess with his litterbox two days ago, and I still haven't cleaned it up.
• I just farted.

El Scorcho (Dios Mio, Soy un Dorko)

"How stupid is it? I can't talk about it; I gotta [write a post] about it, and make a record . . . of my heart."

Press pause and say something. Say something. Say anything. Like that fucking John Cusack movie. I really like Grosse Pointe Blank. Minnie Driver kinda sucked, though. But it was cool when he killed a guy with a pen. Then Minnie helped dispose of the body. I want a chick that will help me dispose of a body.

You're almost there. Put your thumb on the pause button and think of something to say. Like... Fuck, this is hard. I don't have anything to say. That test was hard? No, that's stupid. That movie was funny? No, that's lame. I killed a man with a trident? No, that's weird. I liked Brick. I love lamp.

Focus. Hey, I wonder what's in those boxes that girl is carrying.

Focus, dammit! OK, something to say. Hey,... do you... like... stuff...? Good one. So, what's up? Is that all I've got? I can write fucking poetry and stories and essays and speeches, and all I can come up with is 'So, what's up?'

OK, there's approximately three seconds until the point of no return. Do I say something lame? Two seconds. Or do I say nothing at all? One second. Turning head, opening mouth...

Abort! Abort! Fucking abort! Keep walking. Walk faster. Walk into the fucking sunset.

"How stupid is it? Won't you gimme a minute. Just come up to me and say hello . . . to my heart."

Pretty Accurate

You can study anything.

Group Hug

http://grouphug.us/

The Cure

Why didn't anyone tell me The Cure were so good? That's ten years of good music that I've missed.

On My Way to Becoming a Twenty-Something Hipster

I got an iPod Shuffle. I'm a trendy fuck.

Crush Mush

Feelings are stupid and embarrassing (mostly because I know Stellar is going to ask me about this).

I have a crush on a girl in one of my classes.

Maggie isn't gorgeous by any means, but she's not ugly, either. She's pleasantly and attractively average; what I would consider "cute." C'mon, her name is Maggie, how cute is that! Plus, she has fluffy, black hair that she usually wears in these large tufts that have tendrils flowing down from them, as if buns and ponytails had incestuous relations on her head, and these were the resulting offspring; nevertheless, their seemingly lazy, haphazard, and unpretentious construction has an endearing quality.

Anyway, she's not particularly pretty or, from what she's said in class, she's not particularly insightful or thought-provoking, and neither am I. And I think that's why I find her attractive. Actually, I think the this is the mostly the reason that I find her attractive:

For our class we had to watch a movie, an old, long, boring movie. I had the good fortune of having her sit next to me, but I also had the bad fortune of being shy, and intimidated by women I find attractive, so I sat in silence -- half wanting to fall asleep from boredom, half wanting to strike up a conversation with her. The silence was broken when, during a highly emotional part of the movie when this old widow was crying about her brother-in-law being killed, she leaned over to me and said, "She sounds like Miss Piggy." I laughed heartily and fell in love.

I Imagined Smashing Her Skull and Smiling

Do you ever imagine killing people -- accidentally, perhaps, imagining the murder of some might-be-innocent bystander? Do you ever dream of hacking and smashing a person to death? Naked flesh bleeds, mourning the loss of limbs damaged or altogether separated. Do you ever feel justified, or do you feel guilty? Or do you feel quite calm and content as you're killing?

Love Is Made Up

romance is a dead,
shriveled rose
on february twenty-first,
drowned in a bowl of tepid,
stagnant tap water,
soon to be discarded
with the rest of the garbage.
love is made up
     -- tv love,
        movie love,
        trashy romance novel love --
love is patient;
love is kind;
it does not want
     candy or flowers or jewelry,
-- temporary mementos --
the glittering bobbles,
distracting and confusing
a pre-adolescent sentiment.
the trivializations are used as bait.
and year after year
millions bite the hook.

Addiction

I have a new addiction: The Facebook Dot Com.

Houses and Homes

The fraternity house that I've been living in for the past two years is being torn down to build a new one. So, I moved out of there and into an apartment with a couple of my brothers for a few months.

I hate moving, but this new place is nice, and I'm already starting to settle in.

My People the Sioux

Throughout the stories of his life that Luther Standing Bear relates in My People the Sioux he constantly is comparing and contrasting the life and customs of the Sioux people to those of the white men of the time. One such comparison that I found intriguing was between the religious beliefs of the whites and Luther's people.

I found most of this discussion in the Chapter XII: 'The Sun Dance':

"I learned all about this religion in the natural way, but after learning how to read the white man?s books I compared your religion with ours; but religion, with us Indians, is stronger."

I found this to be quite a bold statement (as are most of the assertions Standing Bear has in this book) and decided to think on the topic.

"Religion" is defined as "a set of beliefs, values, and practices." However, the word "religion" in recent centuries has taken on a certain connotation. It almost implies a level of organization and a tangible set of rules which it's members must prescribe to. I would like to call this sort of religion an "edicted religion" such as Christianity, Judeism, Islam, and Mormonism. But there are also religions that are not dictated by an organization, but somehow culturally understood, transmitted by simple social interaction. An example of this would be Shinto. I would like to call this sort of religion a "cultural religion".

I would say that the Sioux religion falls into my "cultural religion". While I would necessarily say that is a "stronger" sort of religion, as Standing Bear puts it, but I would definitely say that there is some advantage to having such a religion. As long as the religion is regulated by society as a whole, there is no central organization to control it, there is less of a chance that it will become bastardized, abused by those religious figures in power. "We did not commercialize our belief. Our medicine men received no salary." In this way, I would say that the Sioux religion had probably remain more pure and less corrupt than Christianity had over the years.

Tragedy

Tragedy is the lack of an objective definition of "right". Two people at odds because they both believe they're right; a person versus society because his views of what is right is different from the norm; an individual battles with himself because he doesn't know if a decision he has made or will make is "right" -- this is where tragedy is born.

Am I Right?

I found a cool website: http://www.amiright.com/. You can look at lyrics that people messed up and rumors about band name origins and peoples anecdotes about music-related stuff. When I first found it, I spent about an hour just looking around and laughing. Check it out, it's good stuff.