No Use For A Title

I think my debt to karma has been repaid...and looking back, nothing I did really seems all that bad. Better not think about it too much though. =/

Most of the weight I've carried on my proverbial shoulders has been released, but now I feel restless. Most things are starting to feel...fake...again. I don't feel like myself any more; but this time I refuse to cling to the idea that anything or anyone but myself is to blame.

I need to reinvent myself.

Again.

Here's more stuff that I've written *gasp!*, but this writing comes from a much earlier time in my existence. I'll include the version I retyped along with the comments which together became Page10.

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Date Unknown (Typed 2-1-03)

The following is based on a prompt I received in 5th Grade at the end of the D.A.R.E. program, the prompt is as follows:


“This is the time for you to think about all the things you have learned in DARE. Take a few minutes to look through your notebook to see all the information contained in the DARE program. Think of the things your officer has taught you. You’ve learned a lot!

Now, you will be writing your commitment to stay drug-free and violence-free. Be sure to express:

• How you feel about the DARE program.
• What you have learned in DARE that can help you stay drug-free and avoid violence.
• Why you think it is important to be drug-free and avoid violence.”

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I feel that DARE takes more patience than I have. I do not have much patience. But I know not to use drugs, and I think programs like DARE don’t help me at all. I am not a very good writer and I apoligize [sic] for my sloppy handwriting. I feel that most parts of DARE are more of an obligation then [sic] anything else.
I leared [sic] everything I know about drugs in the third grade. DARE doesn’t keep drugs out of my neighborhood. Less than a week ago a man was arrested for possession of marijuana and almost every night there are drug dealers at the store. One of them shot out the back window in my grandfather’s car. And they’re set free. Amendment 8 shouldn’t apply to them.
In short, I live in an unprotected neighborhood.
That’s why I want to move to Pennsylvania
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While retyping the prompt, I noted that I never promised to remain violence-free. =x
I also noted that I am full of shit any time I say my handwriting hasn’t improved since elementary school. I wasn’t always the articulate bastard I am now, but the feeling was there, and this may have been the first time I actually put anything I actually felt into words. Any other time, I was told to not say this or that. Now, I’m much more outspoken on any subject I speak on. =x What else…oh, a little background. This was…oh, I already said this was from the 5th Grade. In case you didn’t already know, I moved to Pennsylvania for my next year of school, and came back the year after that. Stupid asses at my 7th Grade school put me in 6th Grade for the first few weeks >;/
I got a kick out of the “I am not a very good writer…” line. While I don’t like to brag – heh – I like to think I’m a decent writer at this point.

I almost put “righter”. Dammit, damn it all. That’s what I get when I don’t pay attention.

…I’d better repaginate this page, it went over =O

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I left everything as I wrote it then, including spelling errors and such. Knowing my audience, I may need to state that I did not originally write [sic] anywhere in the essay.

I had a plainer style then, and my sentences usually weren't compound like this one.

I got comments on the fact that I could spell "marijuana" but couldn't spell "apoligize". Well, ability in anything - including writing, and its subability spelling - is based on experience. At that time in my life, I had more experience with marijuana than I had with apologizing. =x

Another thing that has changed is my level of patience. Patience is one of the few areas in which I have risen above the chains with which my family has held me down. I grew up in an environment where most of the people wanted results and they wanted them now - instant gratification, if you will. I can't think of any single event or instance that contributed to this change, unless the easy out answer of "time" can be used.

My "cynical" to "bitter and resigned" ratio has probably decreased as well, though both qualities have indisputably skyrocketed.

Well, I suppose now's as good a time as any to stop pretending anyone cares about anything I have to say. Later.

hmm. The only thing I don't like about blogger is the inability to have comments without having to set something up to take them. I'm too lazy for something like that. I'm not sure if other journals are the same way, but I don't think they are. The live/dead journal ones appear to differ only by what the comments are called and what the prompt to create a comment is called, each of which they probably asked the user upon creation.

Oh well.

Well. I was going to repost Page7, but it's a little too recent (June 2002) for me to be entirely comfortable with that. So I'll use my little quip on creativity. =x

I wrote this instead of participating in a discussion that was going on about creativity, oddly enough. I noticed when I got ready to copy/paste this one that it's longer than most, so I won't feel bad if no one reads it. ;[ It was written 8-19-03, almost two months ago.


I grow weary of self-proclaimed 'creative' thinkers. All of them love to think that they are the non-conformists of the world because they are taking the risk, daring to be different (just like their peers). They love the term 'thinking outside the box'. For the creative community to use such a cliched term is one of the ironies that makes being a self-proclaimed intellectual satisfying for me. Anyone should be able to see the irony in this with enough thought. Why does creative thinking have to be thinking outside the box? For one, who decided that thinking inside the box was common, mundane? Secondly, who is to say that truly creative thinking has to come from outside the box? Why can't creative thinking come from inside the box, in an area of the box we've never considered before?

Ever think of that?

I'm now debating with myself whether or not it's wrong of me to keep this 'insight' to myself. Do I feel like it makes me better or different to hold this information? Not really. Like the term 'thinking outside the box', if I've thought it, there's little doubt that someone somewhere has thought it before, though they probably haven't expressed it as eloquently.

Perhaps my time in self-imposed silent observance should come to an end soon.

What makes creativity so important to us, anyway? The minds of more intelligent individuals want to believe that they are different from what is normal, that they are thinking on a new and heightened level and therefore are more able to be creative and declare themselves as such.

Who decides what is creative? Rarely today do we find words that are creative. Many of the possible combinations of sounds in our language have already been given a meaning. To some this may lead to an outcry that modern language is flawed and must be replaced with a new language more capable of relaying creative thought. To anyone who thinks I am presenting this as a viable idea, think also of this: Wasn't Latin, a language now called dead, formerly used by the scholarly/intellectual (and therefore 'creative', no?) community due to its grandeur and versatility? Any attempt by an individual to label himself or herself as creative is misguided at best and elitist at worst.

I didn't answer the last question I presented, because I believe the answer is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what is viewed as creative; I approach things from a more practical manner. I don't need to know that no one before Beethoven arranged musical compositions in quite the way he did to know that I like the result of his juxtapositions of sounds.

If you would still like my opinion on the subject, anyone can decide that anything is creative. I don't know what school of philosophy my next statement belongs to, but it has surely been thought of before I was: Everything is relative. We all know Einstein said time and space are relative. In retrospect, isn't that all-encompassing? If his word is to be believed, Einstein's theory of relativity - when taken on the larger scale that everyone, including myself, eventually does - implies that nothing is ever as it once was. The air will never hold this same temperature, same humidity, same place in the universe as it does right now. The atoms that make up our bodies will never be aligned in quite the same pattern ever again, once derivated from their current positions. One can't stand in the same river twice. Doesn't this mean that everything is inherently creative, if creativity relies on something being new and original?

In case anyone who happens upon this hasn't noticed, I play devil's advocate with myself often. The only two valid counterpoints for the question I posed above that I can think of are as follows: 1) For something to be labeled as creative, it must be on a larger scale than that of the atom (perhaps extending the argument to state that creativity must have an impact - which opens a whole new can of worms involving subjectivity and relativism); and 2)...I can't remember what the second one was. In pondering the first to find a valid extension of the argument, I lost sight of the second counterpoint. Let me go back.

I found a third counterpoint. I recognize it as different from either of the first two, including the one I can't remember. 3) Creativity is not present in that which is ever-changing because creativity involves some level of effort. Perhaps called the 'creative process'. I don't frown on the use of all cliches and terms as uncreative, some are required to convey a thought, and there are differences between creativity and glorified chaos.

If I find counterpoints to my own notions that are unable to be countered, does that render my arguments futile? Does that make me an intellectual hack, in a sense? I don't believe so...from the beginning my only purposes in writing this have been to inspire creative methods of thought and to get my own ideas out of my head before I forget them - which, as you may have seen, isn't always possible. Inspiring creative thought didn't allow for much thought to be put into one rhetorical question before an answer was given, but for that I also have two reasons: 1) The process by which the answer is obtained in the mind is more important than the answer itself, as it is vital to find that path; the subject itself is meaningless to me and only serves as a method of augmenting the thought processes of their own. 2) The fact that I gave an answer doesn't mean it is correct. Even if it is, multiple answers may be correct. I've stated before that truth is a different thing for every sentient individual. "Your mileage may vary." I don't claim to be an authority on anything, and I am of the opinion that anyone who claims to be an authority on a subjective matter is out of line in doing so.

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I'm a little disappointed in that one. I got out of hand with using lots of words in my sentences there. It's not exactly an easy read...I think the middle part is least important to the concept, but there it is, as it was except for one error I corrected. I had the word "and" where I should have had "at" at some point. *shrug*

Damn it.

The posting failed for my would-be second post and the text was lost. I'm not typing all of that again, so I'll just type the gist of it.

I will indicate when a post is mainly concerned with something I wrote before at the beginning, and will give background info like when I wrote it if possible. After it, I will clarify what I said and/or tried to say.

I don't think all my posts will be about old stuff; in fact, this one is about a bunch of those quizzes that seem to be super popular among people I know lately.

..."super popular"...I must be tired. Anyway, here goes.


You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Heroism? Compassion? All is secondary to superhuman strength and the ability to fly. ;[



You are Revelation.


Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I guess this one kinda ties in with my last post. Sort of. I always did like Revelation, though. The monsters in it were/are/will be neat.



MEDIUM


(results contain pictures) What kind of ANIME BOOBS do you have?
brought to you by Quizilla

Uh, ok...oh, by the way, not all the pictures have the boobies covered, in case you felt like taking that quiz in front of Grandma or something.



You represent... apathy.
You don't really show any emotion. You can be
considered cruel and cold, but you just don't
really care about anything. This is just the
way you are... you're quite a challenge to get
close to, and others may perceive you as
boring.


What feeling do you represent?
brought to you by Quizilla

Can't argue with that...or won't. Whatever.

I guess that's it for this post. Later. [Later being about 10-15 minutes from now]

I was reading other peoples' blogs and journals - both the live and dead varieties - and I decided that if anyone's thoughts should be made known, mine should. I shouldn't be so greedy with them. =x

As with most things of this nature I attempt to start, I will probably not keep up with it for very long. The first posts after this one will probably just be stuff I wrote way back. Nothing terribly interesting, because I only still have the stuff I sent to other people (and got back from them after my originals died with my HD), but the perspective on me they provide could be useful for any number of reasons, including planning an attack on me or explaining how a person such as me could "just snap like that".

Or maybe not.

This blog's font is awfully large. Oh well. May as well get started with the reposts.

This first one is the third page from the legendary Hatred.doc, making it Page2. Meaning that it started with zero. I can count. Don't f*ck with me. Here it is in its entirety.


5-20-01 (Revised 5-26-01)

My friends, it is truly a sad age we live in. Even the most 'enlightened' and intelligent of men believe that they are God's ultimate creation, and that they must seek the 'higher meaning' to their lives.

I am not denying the existence of God. When dealing with science, I do not believe in scientific theory, only scientific fact. I do believe in God, in some form. I do not believe in organized religion, however, or the butchering and additions humankind has made to "God's word."

You cannot truly blame people for their inaccurate views. The Bible speaks of Man, the last, and therefore best, of God's creatures. A creature to whom all other creatures would capitulate. A creature created in God's very own image.

I can't really argue with the fact that all other creatures on this planet are submissive to humans. A mere look at the numbers will show that while the human population is increasing at an alarming rate, many species die every day. Most (if not all) of these deaths due to human interference. It makes me wonder if God cares about these animals. Does the Bible not say that the meek shall inherit the Earth? If so, the food chain (or the Bible) is in serious need of revision. (I won't allow myself to get started on the subject of Bible revision, at least not yet.)

The other section of the Bible that explains (or tries to) man's conceited view of the world mentions God creating Man in his own image. This explanation, like most of the Bible, is subject to interpretation. Man almost certainly does not have the same appearance as God. Can you not envision the concept of a thing without its actual existence? This is more of a philosophical question, but I will go into that later as well.

As for man's 'higher purpose', his 'higher meaning', I think the answer has been apparent to us all along. Man's own self-righteousness has not allowed him to come to terms with this fact: There is no inherent meaning to life. You give meaning to life through your actions, your prayers, your hopes, your dreams. I find it sad that men would be so conceited as to think their lives are of universal significance.

With this final paragraph, I bring this summary on my views of Man and religion to a close. I could explain more about Bible 'revision' or Philosophy, but that would only dishearten me further. Before you make any response to this, think. Think with a clear, objective, unprejudiced mind. If you agree, that is fine. If not, I wish upon you the discovery of your own universal truth. After all, there are as many truths as there are people.

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I looked at the date on that and different thoughts went through my head, one being that Page2 was awfully old. Then, as is usual when I think of something old from my comp, I think about how I never saved any of that stuff on another medium. If I did I forgot about it, and perusing my floppy disks looking for stuff is unappealing.

Unlike most of Hatred.doc, Page2 was written to be read, which should be obvious. I suppose it would serve me well to add a little clarification to what I wrote.

I still believe in the concept of God, but only as a driving force, not a being that has compassion and desires worship. I believe that parts of the Bible - and thus any holy text - are 'true' in the sense that they were originally based on something that actually happened. But the difference between what was and what is written is often very great; something I myself know very well. In that sense, I look at the Bible in the same way I look at Greek mythology: It's an interesting and inspirational topic, and there is surely much to be learned from it, but it shouldn't be taken at face value. The way figures in the media skate around directly comparing modern religion with religions now regarded as mythology is a source of minor amusement to me.

If my sentences were too long, I'm sorry. I don't say that in an elitist way to imply that I'm apologizing for anyone's inability to comprehend, but I usually want a sentence to convey an entire idea and I also usually feel the need to justify what I say in some way rather than to just say it.