¡Felíz Navidad!

Merry Christmas from a non-Christian!

Here's what I got (I'm bragging, shut up):
A new TV
Things to do dishes
Dishes
Socks
Jones Soda pie flavors
Money
Random foods
Lotion
Perfume
Cannibal! the Musical
Start the Revolution Without Me
Death to Smoochy
Blazing Saddles
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Psychopathia Sexualis
Some magnetic dogs that talk, light up, and ring when they kiss....dunno about that one....
A soap basket hand-made by my aunt (it's awesome)
and....*drumroll*..... an new Creative Vision: M 30 gig mp3 player!!!











It's a wooden pickle.

To the Handfuls of Starvin' Marvins

Lately, there's been quite a few guys in my circle that are getting pissed off with man whores and stupid women. Many of these guys are fantastic, truly great guys. Marriage material. Most of these guys can't accept that and want girls now. It isn't even for sexual gratification that these men want relationships, they are just sick of feeling left out.

I do not understand what's so great about relationships, so maybe that's why guys come to me with these girl troubles. Maybe it's because I'm one of the guys, but with boobs, so I would be able to see both sides of the story. I'm sure it can't be my comforting abilities, which are nil, or my advice I give, which is crap. My thinking of relationships being kind of stupid doesn't really help when trying to console my guys, because they always get pissy when I tell them that relationships aren't that great and are more trouble than they're worth. I guess it's like complaining about how the cook fixed my steak in front of a starving Ethiopian.

Guys that I'm speaking of, there's nothing wrong with you. There's plenty wrong with the man-whores that the chicks are flocking to. These guys are assholes, listen only to their penii, and only know how to make a girl swoon to get into her pants. You're nothing like that. You're sweet, actually care about the girls you like, and make a girl swoon for the sake of making her happy. You're long-term material. Right now, in college, most girls don't want to worry about long-term. Girls like the hot guys that are doubles for Greek statues that are horny assholes right now. As one of my favorite movies, Wet, Hot, American Summer, states:

Listen, Coop. Last night was really great. You were incredibly romantic and heroic, no doubt about it. And that's great. But I've thought about it, and my thing is this. Andy is really hot. And don't get me wrong, you're cute too, but Andy is like, cut. From marble. He's gorgeous. He has this beautiful face and this incredible body, and I genuinely don't care that he's kinda lame. I don't even care that he cheats on me. And I like you more than I like Andy, Coop ... And maybe it'll be a different story when I'm ready to get married, but right now, I am entirely about sex. I just wanna get laid. I just wanna take him and grab him and f*ck his brains out, ya know? So that's where my priorities are right now. Sex. Specifically with Andy and not with you.

Understand that once life smacks these girls upside the head, they'll be falling all over guys like you. Tell you the truth, I would have a crush on you boys if I weren't so fiercely independent.

I was once in your shoes. There was a long long time in my life that guys paid no attention to me when all I wanted was a boyfriend. Maybe you guys will turn out like me in time. Maybe you'll see that relationships aren't all that great, or maybe they'll be everything you hoped they could be. Just know that, someday, you will have a relationship. That someday will be closer than you think. And don't change anything about yourself. You're kick-ass the way you are, it's the girls that have problems right now.







Was Ezekiel really abducted by aliens?

Thoughts After One of My Sits

What if there was no meaning to life? What if all this time that humanity has been trying to put a meaning to life was in vain? Why does there have to be a point, a purpose? Is that all it takes to make us happy? Is it really so depressing that there is no point, that we all just walk around for a few years and then we don't? So what if all of life is a coincidence. We're here. Why do we always have to strive for a better pay check so that we can have things that other people have decided are necessities? What's wrong with living off of what you do and you do alone? I can't wait to just disappear for a year or two and have minimal contact with the outside world. Is it really so earth shaking to think that there is no god? I think there is something, but maybe that's just my human nature, to think that everything that's happened can't simply be a coincidence. It's really comforting to think that this isn't it, that there is someone higher than you that actually has control over your life. We live our whole lives under the control of another person, so those people must have something controlling them. In all actuality, we are in the same compost heap with the rest of the world, but no, we control the planet. The only reason we think we're so special is because we can make frivolous crap. Computers, clothing, weapons...big whoop. If you live your whole life fearing death, you haven't lived. Accept that you are going to die. In all probability, you're going to die tomorrow. No matter how many times you hear "live for today," you rarely follow it. You're still in college trying to get a better job with better pay. You're still at work to make money for tomorrow. You make plans for next week. It's so liberating to just pack your bags and leave for no real reason with no destination in mind. Just pick up and go.









If I stop believing in you, will you stop believing in me?

A Close to the Semester

We had our band Christmas concert Sunday. I'm just happy I don't have to play that stupid music again for another year.

I found out, after the game on Saturday, that the topic of my religion is swept under the rug in my family. Religion doesn't matter, but I sure don't like my dad feeling like he should be ashamed of me. I'm just going to be a curt smart-ass if anyone asks why I didn't go to the Christmas service and say "my parents won't let me disclose that information." They'll probably think I'm pregnant. Wouldn't be the first time a family member thought that...

And my finals are easy this semester. I had to play a witness in a trial for History of Africa today, and I think I did pretty well. I retorted quite a bit to the defense and I'm proud of the job I did there. Tomorrow's a Core final (oh dear, I'm shaking in my shoes. I sure hope I don't drown in this sarcasm...) and Wednesday is my Human Sexuality final, where it really isn't a final, but just another test. They were nice to me this semester. It'll be a whole different story next semetser....

...I...just...wanted...to...see...how...many...more...of...these...I...could...put...in...here....










With my feet on the air and my head on the ground

Technology Sucks

Yeah....my mp3 player isn't usable anymore. I had to restart it because it wasn't accepting songs, and it only comes back with 397 songs. I had almost 4,000 on there. I'm at a loss for words. I may just get a 10 gig player or something, I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. It's stupid I'm almost in tears for a freaking piece of metal.








And I wonder if I'd see another highway.

Yes, I Love the Pixies

For some reason, when I got back to my room, I thought back to a conversation at lunch and got all fueled up again, so I'm going to write it out. Live with it.

Opinion is different than fact. (who knew?!?) When I say that the Pixies are one of the most influential bands that ever walked the earth, don't smother me saying "YOU'RE NOT ALWAYS RIGHT!" "THAT'S JUST YOUR OPINION!" No. It's true. When a band shakes the very foundations of what music was up to that point, that's an influential band. When a singer, say Justin Timberlake, steals other musicians' music just to "sing" and "rap" over it just like every other (sadly) popular artist of their day, it is not influential. My opinion plays in when I say that type of "music" is crap.

I know I'm not always right. I'll admit that. (insert pause for gasps from readers) You know, I'm rarely correct. But truth is that the Pixies are an extremely influential band. Reasons are as follows:

A) Their lyrics. Rare is the day that you'll come across a Pixies song that makes sense straight off the bat. Even I, after a few years of listening to them almost daily, have a very difficult time telling you what some of their songs are about. But, I can tell you they all deal with something different. One is about a prison inmate writing to his girlfriend asking her to send him her dirty clothes. Another is about how everyone hated the Alexander Eiffel's tower and how art isn't appreciated in its time. Then, you'll come across a song about how an extraterrestrial was having a great day until he decided to visit Earth and got thrown into a crate and studied by scientists. Another song, written and sung in Puerto Rican Spanish, is about how much a boy loves a blonde surfer, and how sh*tty life becomes when they break up. Variety. It's not all "My life sucks, drone drone drone," "I like you, but you don't like me, drone," "Bitches and hos and money, my life is better than yours and I'm rubbing it in your face, but not without saying how tough life was for me because I'm black or I lived in some city." And not only did they have variety, you actually have to use your brain to understand what's being sung about.

B) The music. It's so unclean, so unfinished. That's part of what makes you pay attention to it. Very few of their songs sound like "studio quality" songs. It's such a step in a different direction that one can't help but listen. And then the guitar. Not knowing anything about guitar, it sounds fairly simple. I'm probably wrong, but still. The thing that stands out about the guitar in their songs is its tuning. It's constantly bending, making you want to cock your head to the side when you hear it. Again, it's an attention grabber for the ears. The bass is so simple, almost like a heart beat of the songs. The drums are simple too, sometimes going on beats that you're not used to hearing, but still quite simplistic. Music doesn't have to be complicated to be amazing. And the dynamics. One second it's making your ears bleed, the next you have to sit next to the speaker to hear it. They swing more than the moods of Aunt Flo. It's all about keeping the listener listening and underlining what's the most important part of the message the lyrics are trying to convey.

C) The singing. Frank Black is by no means the best singer I've ever heard. He can hit the notes (when he wants to), I'll give him that, but he's not a quality singer. But his voice fits with the music perfectly. Whether he's singing or yelling (and his yelling is in short bouts, to underline points of the song, not enough to make your ears bleed. It still has an oddly musical feel to it). Kim Deal, the bassist, has a decent voice as well. Not the best, not the worst. Again, it fits perfectly with the music. It adds to the overall sound of their songs and keeps that much more of your attention.

D) No sex appeal. In a world where few artists are successful unless they can look good in skimpy outfits, the Pixies are extremely refreshing. Basically, it underlines basing the music on the music itself and not the looks of the band. The only video I've seen from them is for "Veloria," and all it is is them running down a quarry in slow motion. Not a "sexy sexy" slow motion, more like a "crap, the projector's not working" slow motion. It makes you pay more attention to the sound than the visual.

Balding, sweatshirts, and flannel. Nothing sexier than that.

E) The bands they influenced: Nirvana, Weezer, Radiohead, David Bowie, U2, Blur, Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, OK Go, and pretty much any modern rock band you can think of. I know, I know. U2 and David Bowie were before the Pixies, but they admit that their songs written after listening to them were altered by influence.




The Pixies are a required taste, and I understand that not everyone likes them. But, you don't have to like someone to respect them. And NEVER tell me that Justin Timberlake is anything more than a flash in the pan. That's a spit in music's face. And NEVER tell me that "[I'm] not always right" in a high-and-mighty, I'm-going-to-knock-you-off-your-pedestal kind of tone. That's a spit in my face, telling me that I'm ignorant of myself, and I don't much appreciate that. And don't say that "it's just [my] opinion" that the Pixies were one of the most influential bands. It's fact, not opinion. A band doesn't have to be commercially successful in order for them to change the shape of the world of music. And being commercially successful doesn't always change the way music is done from them on, like, oh....Justin Timberlake.

No.

I've got something against you.

Slightly Annoyed

Variety is the spice of life. Stop doing the exact same thing every day. If you're in a rut and feel down, this may be a reason.

Although all of you can take this to heart, I'm hoping a certain few consider this much more than others.






A lady doesn't wander all over the room and blow on some other guy's dice.

Reasons Why I Dislike Christianity

Most of you know I left Christianity behind and picked up Buddhism in its place in late February. I've had a slight rise in people asking me why I don't like Christianity lately, so I decided to be fairly serious and write down some reasons.



1) I never felt God in church. Not once. I could feel God in all other sorts of random locations (i.e. cemeteries, my room, my g'parents' resort), but never in church. It didn't matter what church I went to, either. EP's Presbyterian church, EP's St. John the Baptist Catholic church, EP Jr.'s Methodist church, the Christian church near my g'parents' resort, or the Washington Cathedral...nothing. Sure, some of the buildings were really cool (especially the latter. I could spend forever in there just marveling the construction and windows). The second that my parents -mainly my dad- stopped forcing me to go to church, I did.


2) The people in my church specifically definitely did not help. The average age has to be hovering around 90. The hearing aids go off in a chorus of their own during hymns. None of these people went to church for God, they went to gossip and hear the bible backing up their opinions on contemporary issues. Nobody liked the service. Whenever something held them in the sanctuary longer than 40 minutes, whether it be the choir or the sermon, they started shifting towards the door. It was sickening. I don't think there were three people in that congregation on any given day that could truly say they felt God. The pastors never seemed to have connected with God, either. They always seemed like they were just reading from a script. Being preached to by those pastors was like a deaf man explaining music to me. It was ridiculous and stupid. There is only one pastor that I've met that I can tell has connected with God, more than just on a "I read Your book, hyuck hyuck" level, and he's the only exception for me to consider going to church when he's preaching.


3) People that consider the Bible the absolute truth. Sure, it says homosexuality is wrong. But, it also says that if there's an angry mob of people outside your door, send your virgin daughter or your wife out to them to subdue their passions. After they're done raping her to shreds, show no sympathy to her. Instead, take her dying body, cut it into pieces, and send it to neighboring towns, where they'll discuss what happened (this actually happened in the Bible, Judges 19:22-29). That Bible sure sounds like something that we should take word for word!

If you correctly followed the instructions thus far, your wife will be dead, or close enough to it, by this point. You should then chop her up into twelve pieces to send to your neighbors. They'll see it as a symbol of love, much like Van Gogh's girlfriend when she got his ear as an early birthday preset.

4) The mythologies of Jesus taken as truth. The whole birth story, I find, to be hilarious. Born of a virgin...uh...huh. And people today laugh at Athena being born from Zeus' head when Hephaestus cracked it open with a hammer, or axe depending on the story. Truth is, the whole myth of the birth of Jesus was being told long before Jesus was around. This myth belonged to the Persian underground cult of Mithras, who also used baptism, wine and bread in their rituals, had crosses for symbolism, had a temple on Vatican Hill, believed in a last judgment, and had a Heaven and Hell concept. Thing is, the myths aren't as important as people tend to think they are, like my dad who will get extremely short with me whenever I question the story. Just because Jesus wasn't born of a virgin doesn't mean he wasn't an awesome guy. He is the most influential man that's ever lived, with all the blind followers and murders committed in his name and all. It's not all negatives, either. Mother Theresa was kick-ass, too.
Buddhism has some weird stories about Siddhartha (the guy the religion is based on) as well, that I don't believe. Like, at his birth, he sprung out of his mother's womb and walked however many steps, signifying some important number. Riiiight.


5) Jesus was the son of God. Just like I'm the daughter of God. And you're a child of God, just like the rest of us. But, Christianity says a solid "NO" to that. Jesus was God's only spoiled child. Nobody can even come close to Jesus! Pretty pessimistic, if you ask me. It's really holding down the Christian population. I think if you were told you could be just as cool as Jesus, more people would try to be and not hold themselves back. If Jesus was the only child of God, it's pretty much saying that you're nowhere close to being God's favorite, so don't even attempt anything.


6) Heaven and Hell. God loves all of His children, which is why most of you are going to Hell. Only if you accept Jesus as your savior and live your life as true to the Christian doctrine as humanly possible will you make it into Heaven. If you live life perfectly, but don't accept Jesus as your savior, then off to Hell you go. I always have to giggle profusely whenever I watch South Park and they have Gandhi in Hell.
My dad also constantly tries to guilt me into going back to Christianity every time I go home with the whole Heaven and Hell spiel.

Dad- I'm scared that you're going to go to Hell for not accepting Jesus.
Me- Well, I don't believe in Hell, so I guess you're alone in your fears.
Dad- Just like if you don't believe in cancer, you won't get it...
Me- Okay. Do you think that you're going to go to Heaven?
Dad- I can't say that I will, but I think I will, yes.
Me- And that I'll go to Hell?
Dad- Because you don't accept Jesus, yes.
Me- Then how can you truly be in Heaven if the thought of me suffering in Hell will always be with you?

7) That Christianity's the only way. I know that almost every religion has this mindset about themselves. I can't stand it, which is another reason why I went to Buddhism. Siddhartha said if his ways to reach enlightenment weren't working for you, stop! Do what works for you in order to reach happiness. Heck, don't be Buddhist if it's not working, just keep your goal set in your mind and be a good person while trying to attain that goal. A true Buddhist, by the way, does not go out to convert people. In fact, they warn against joining up without in depth research on it to make sure that it's the right path for you to take. You don't have to be Buddhist or else, like practically every religion. Instead, it's be a Buddhist if you think that it's your path to gain eternal bliss, and if it isn't, find the path you're supposed to take instead.



I'm not trying to sway any of you away from your beliefs. I just want you all to be able to critique your beliefs and think for yourself. A man doesn't have to perform magic tricks to know what's going on in life. He doesn't have to walk seven steps straight from the birth canal or ascend to Heaven on a horse. He just has to know how to be happy, how to help others be happy, have good public speaking skills, and not be a pompous ass. I suppose the main reason that I don't like Christianity is because the religion is almost nothing like Jesus' teachings. He taught of acceptance, bliss through voluntary poverty, and love. He was right if he actually said "It's more difficult for a rich man to get into Heaven than a camel through an eye of a needle." Sadly, this line is being bounced off of the deaf ears of billions who claim to be Christian, and the majority of them being rich. Just like accepting people for who they are, whether they're a different color, have a different sexual orientation, prefer to wear clothes meant for the opposite sex, or could make a sailor blush with such colorful language is shoved under the carpet so that people can point an accusing finger at the local homosexual instead of pointing at themselves and realizing what they are doing.








Falling free, falling free, falling free, falling free, falling free.

I'm Bored!

Ok, here's the deal. Write your 15 favorite bands in a comment, saying which song you heard first (1) which song made you fall in love with said band (2) and which song by said band is your favorite now (3).

The Pixies
1. Where is My Mind?
2. Caribou
3. Mr. Grieves

Metric
1. Monster Hospital
2. Combat Baby
3. Rock Me Now

OK Go
1. Get Over It
2. Get Over It
3. It's a Disaster

The Unicorns
1. I Was Born (a Unicorn)
2. Haunted House
3. Les Os

Louis XIV
1. Finding Out That True Love is Blind
2. The Hall of Mirrors
3. Illegal Tender

Dresden Dolls
1. Coin-Operated Boy
2. Bad Habit
3. Shores of California

3 Dog Night
1, Black and White
2. Joy to the World
3. Eli's Coming

The Doors
1. Love Her Madly
2. Hello, I Love You
3. People are Strange

Blue Man Group
1. Drumbone
2. Rods and Cones
3. What is Rock

Cake
1. Never There
2. Sheep Go to Heaven
3. Sheep Go to Heaven

Beethoven
1. Für Elise
2. Für Elise
3. Sonata Pathetique

Mindless Self Indulgence
1. Shut Me Up
2. Masturbates
3. Whipstickagostopr

Creedence Clearwater Revival
1. Fortunate Son
2. Fortunate Son
3. Fortunate Son

DVDA
1. America, Fuck Yeah
2. Sgt. Baker
3. Crack


(Upon recieving the information that I had forgotten Quit Your Dayjob, they have now replaced Gob. Those Canadian bastards.)

Quit Your Dayjob
1. Open Up, Coconut!
2. Pissing on a Panda
3. Vlado Video






D-D-D-D-DOTA!