Growing up

I think you get to a point in your life where you realize you are your own responsibility, where everything is on you.  For me, and probably for most of you, that's when I went to college.  I'm back for Christmas break and everything is different.  Some of the furniture is moved.  They got rid of the futon and instead there's a chair and an ottoman in my study.  I liked my futon.  But that's beside the point.  I get back to my home and it's still my home, but I think my home is now less the place where I am and more the people I'm with.  I love my family so much and I don't think I realized it until I went away for a while.  And I realize that my family is more than just my biological family.  It's the guys I explored my city with in middle school.  It's the girl who gave me the blanket I sleep with every night.  It's my friend in Ghana, teaching underprivileged children how to write and do math.  It's the girl in New York, who I talk to every day even though we have nothing too interesting to say.

Anyway, I realize that I'm being taken care of more and more by myself and my friends.  And it's super weird.  Not that I'm not being supported 100% by my parents, but that I don't need 100% of their support anymore.  And I watch movies with people falling in love and I realize that that might be me, in maybe 10 years.  Maybe 10 years from now I'll be married.  That's insane.  Because I'm just a kid.  But I'm not just a kid, and I think this part of my life is the part where I become okay with that.  I walked by the park by my house the other day, and I was amazed at how much fun kids have.  I think I've forgotten how to have fun.  I remember thinking as a kid that adults don't know how to have fun, and I think I'm forgetting.  My definition of a good time has been turned into two categories of things:

1.  Creating relationships with people.  Whether talking to a girl in class, or meeting people at parties, or hanging with my friends, you know what I'm talking about.  Meeting the people.  It's the better part of my fun.

2. The worst part of my fun, and I think what separates "the boys from the men" in the worst possible way, is the endless competition.  We no longer have games, we have competition.  I don't play Halo and marvel at the colors and intricacies and feel of the game, of assuming the role of a super-soldier, I play it to kick my room-mate's ass.  And you probably do too.  It's the same for many other things, when you're a kid, you want to run fast, when you're an adult, you want to run faster then everyone else.  And it sucks.  It's what makes us successful, as adults, it makes us create better products then everyone else, so people will buy our products, instead of everyone else's, so we can make money, at the expense of everyone else.

I don't know, being an adult sucks in some ways, but it rocks in others.  I can't wait until I'm older, until I've gone through law school.  Married a really smart brunette who loves my stories and poems.  And she plays piano, and likes when I sing along, even though I suck.  I can't wait for my 2.5 kids and I'm allergic to dogs so maybe we'll get a bunch of fish or an iguana or something.  And we'll live in my hometown, or in the suburbs of Chicago or Boston.  I doubt I'll go west coast, that's a bit of a stretch.  I really like snow.  And the west coast is no place for a lawyer, unless I wanted to be an entertainment or corporate lawyer.  I'll still go to my family's timeshares in Hawaii and Spain.  I'd teach my kid to ride his bike and pay somebody out the ass to teach him or her to play piano or guitar or any instrument they wanted.  Hopefully I'll make good money, and be able to give them every advantage they deserve.  I hope I can live up to my expectations, as you can see they're normal, but extremely big.

I don't know if anyone reads this.  If you got all the way through, feel free to just say hey.

Cheers, and happy holidays!

My Life Is Complete

I just completed my The Beatles discography.  No more fear of me dying and coming back as a ghost.

Movie List

Ya'll can duke it out with me at your convenience.  Let me know if I forgot some things because I know I did.

Best War Scene:  Saving Private Ryan

Runner Up: Letters From Iwo Jima

Film I Most Relate To: Adventureland

Runner Up: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Movie that made me pee myself a little bit (not really, you idiots) for a good reason: Airplane

Runner Up: Anchorman

Movie that made me pee myself a little bit for a bad reason: Aliens

Runner Up: The Shining

Movie that was so bad that I would have faked peeing myself in front of Kate Beckinsale just to not have to sit through it: Epic Movie

Runner Up: Dragon Wars

Best Movie From When I Was Young: Toy Story

Runner Up: The Lion King

Best Foreign/Check Me Out, I'm Artsy: Pan's Labyrinth

Runner Up: Let The Right One In

Best Guiltry Pleasure: LOTR

Runner Up: Star Wars and Harry Potter tie

Movie I Shouldn't Have Liked As Much As I Did: Ghosts Of Girlfriend's Past (cause Jennifer Garner's a fox and you know it)

Runner Up: Disturbia

Greatest Mindfuck: The Matrix

Runner Up: Inception

Greatest "ooooh, i just got owned": The Usual Suspects

Runner Up: Fight Club

Greatest Franchise: Bond

Runner Up: Star Wars

Greatest Race/Chase Scene:  The Italian Job

Runner Up: The Fast and the Furious

Best Martial Arts Scene: Bruce Lee vs Chuck Norris (I KNOW, RIGHT??? IT'S SO DANK) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPiMpdm3wnQ

Runner Up: Jackie Chan in The Drunken Masterhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6o9p8yXjr0&feature=search

Best Stylized Fight Scene: Kill Bill: Uma Thurman vs the crazy 88 -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3aFv8IQb4s&feature=search

Runner Up: 300 Spartans vs The Persians -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4_8x4lY2Uk&feature=search

Coolest Training Scene: Rocky Training Montage -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pmSvWHgaao&feature=related

Runner Up: Miracle: Again -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AajQn7b18&feature=search

Biggest Dissappointment: Pearl Harbor

Runner Up: 9 (cause the trailer was so sick and the movie was only mediocre) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnoJecu9e7c&feature=search

Most Essential Movies (that I've seen, sorry there's no citizen kane or casablanca)

(I actually saw Citizen Kane since I wrote this originally.  We can throw that between The Godfather and Schindler's List)

1. The Godfather - Duh

2. Schindler's List - Possibly the most moving tale on the list

3. Saving Private Ryan - Realistic to the point of horrifying...  I got shellshocked just by watching it

4. Fantasia - Animation masterpiece

5. 28 Days Later - Scary while maintaining good storytelling is hard to find in contemporary horror, but this exceeds that by a mile

6. The Matrix - When a movie made me question my own existance, I realized it had to go on the list

7. Jaws - The reason I fear deep water

8. 12 Angry Men - Compelling, riveting courtroom classic

9. Snow White - First hit of Walt Disney's that redefined the genre

10. Pan's Labyrinth - Nightmarish and horrifying yet incredibly wonderful...  Like the bad trip version of Alice in Wonderland

Honestly

Once you realize that the only person that you have to fulfill is yourself, life makes a lot more sense.  Don't live for others, do what you do because you want to.  Go to school because you want to be a more intelligent human being, not because your parents want to.  Turn in your homework because you want to learn the material, not because you want your teachers to shut up.  Help other people because it makes you happy, not because you have to do community service for some class or to get into college.  You'll wake up one day and realize that you love making people happy and smile.  It's the best thing in the world.  Especially her.  I told New York girl that I was into her and she wouldn't have me.  I didn't tell her I love her, but I didn't want to come on too strong.  I realize that the distance would get in the way.  I don't know. I know nothings going to happen between me and her, but where I lost a potential girl friend, i think I gained my best friend.  I'm not going to be any less nice or any less there for her.  I know that it would be easier for me to get girls if I was more of a douche, but it's not worth sacrificing part of myself along the way.  It's better to do what is right than what is easy.  Plus, I'd rather a girl fall in love with the nice guy in me, the real me, than some douche bag front i put on.  I know New York cares about me, a lot.  We've stayed up late in the night and put off things for each other more than once, just to hear about each others days.  She's still coming to hang out with me this Christmas, and I'm still going to see her in her show, she's an actress if  I didn't tell you, this spring.  I look forward to knowing her the rest of my life.

Wikileaks

http://wikileaks.org/

What this site is: It is a compendium of over 400,000 classified and otherwise not-released-to-the-public documents detailing the lesser known side of the Iraq war.  Also understand that obviously every document here is not earth-shattering and going to twist your conceptions of our nation, but there are a few diamonds in there that really make you reevaluate how you feel.  You have to do a bit of digging.

Why it's important:  It is documentation of the deaths of some 104000 civilians in Iraq.  Even more, now, I believe.

Why it's not criminal:  This does not divulge secrets that would effect the condition of the war currently, at least not directly.  Like it doesn't reveal our secret plans or whatever else.  However, it does show us gunning down Iraqi civilians trying to retrieve the wounded after we mistakenly massacred 8 civilian reporters (this attack ended up mortally wounding two children as well who were with the Iraqi rescuers, who we refused to treat at our camp).  It also reveals interesting things like who the hell really has the bomb, and what is still just media bullshit.  The only way this could effect the war is in the same way footage effected Vietnam - we realized that war really does suck and we ran the hell out of there.

Why you may not have heard of this yet:  The government has blacklisted this site.  No media is supposed to really talk about this, like ever.  Think about this.  400,000 documents?  Greatest intelligence leak literally ever?  That's definitely bigger than "two women were trampled on black friday".  And you never heard about it, except for maybe a whisper online or on CNN.  It's been banned in many countries, because it reveals documents that were exchanged between our embassy and there's, and from what I've seen, some are fairly incriminating.  China recently attacked the site with their tech, overloading it in excess of 10 Gigabytes per second (that's a shitload) in an effort to shut it down, because it revealed less than happy things about their government's dealings as well.

I'm not screwing with you, this is legitimate.  People have gone to jail, and people are on the run for creating this site.  You can peruse it, however, without fear, as this is freedom of speech and information.

I know a lot of you don't really involve yourself in politics, or you have some huge boner for America, but please realize that this is not some "opinion" or me pushing some political agenda on you.  These are straight up facts, straight from the mouth of your government.  These are facts for you to interpret as you desire.  Take a bit of time out of your day to take a look at it, this is incredibly important.  I find it to be imperative to know what is going on around me.

Prepare to shit bricks

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Think about it :)

Catholic (noun) - One who is addicted to cats.

I was talking to my friend today...

And we were discussing how people can be good friends.  Specifically us, really.  She's pretty conservative, catholic, and whiter than wonder bread.  I'm liberal, atheist and multiracial.  She believes in pro-life, i'm pro-choice.  She's republican, I'm democrat.  On paper, we're about as different as you can get.  Hell, she uses a PC, I use a mac.  After a while of talking, we decided that there are several levels to a person.  They are as follows:

Superficial - Looks, material possessions, etc.
Characteristic - Preference in music or movies or food etc.
Deep - Religious, philosophical, ethical beliefs etc.
Process - How we process the world around us.

Most people would argue that the first three exist, but neglect the third.  But it is my belief that even if you have fundamental disagreements with a person, if they arrive to that conclusion in a logical, intelligent and critical manner, than it's much easier to respect their differences.  For me and her, for example, superficially there's no problems, we love each others characteristic aspects, we are totally opposite in our deep aspects, but we have almost identical thought processes.  I'm not sure if this really means anything, or we're just taking a look at something for the sake of understanding it.  There's not really much you can do with "the reason we're friends".  But regardless, she's one of my best friends on the planet.  I love her to death, and she's one of the biggest influences on me.  I remember the first time I met her, we got into an argument in politics over Obama vs McCain two years ago.  I ended up calling her a fascist lol.  And now we're best friends!  Funny how the world turns out sometimes.  But to quote the movie Wedding Crashers, "Love is finding your counterpoint in another."

Harrison Ford on Conan

I finally had the exquisite pleasure of watching Harrison Ford on Conan while Harrison Ford is absolutely plastered.  Drunk people ftw?

Probably the best cover of any song I've ever seen:

 You need to watch this

I try to write a bit of a poem every day

Read the books of your bitter blasphemies
The tides recede and the world reveals it's true self
The kraken rears it's ugly head and the citizens cry in anguish
For the help of a man who is already asking for help

Harry Potter

I'm overflowing with excitement for Harry Potter tomorrow night.  There was a point of my life where I wanted to make films for a living, then I wanted to write films for a living, then I wanted to write.  Now, I obviously didn't take any of those paths, but the Harry Potter series is and always has been my my Catcher in the Rye.  I grew up on these books, and I love the characters and story and the world that has been created.  I love Harry and Ron and Hermione, watching them grow up and go through many of the same things that I went through, even though they are in a fantasy world where everything you could ever dream of is real.  I'm personally extremely glad that David Yates opted to make the final chapter in two parts.  Some people think that it's simply to make more money, but I think when dealing with such a contemporary topic, he can't alter it without there being an uproar and there was simply too much material in this last book to be done justice in two and a half hours.  Honestly I wouldn't mind if each movie was set in multiple parts, I would still happily dish out my ten or so dollars to see it every time.  I hope you all join me at midnight on Thursday to witness the cult cinematic event of a lifetime.

Apathy is the Glove Into Which Evil Slips It's Hand

Why do good people insist on doing nothing?  Why do people who have the potential to be competent and intelligent, critically thinking human beings and yet they allow themselves to be pretty much shat upon by the people who run their lives.  It seems that many people are content with letting their lives be run by people who don't give a flying fuck about them.  I know I'm sounding like George Carlton, but honestly, this nation is run by Disney, Coca Cola and Viacom, along with a few other super conglomerates.  And nobody seems to care.  We have troops in every country in the world to force economic slavery upon the third world.  If we think that we're better than we were 200 years ago, we're not.  Just now the world is a bigger place, so we're comfortable with allowing everybody in the country to be the slave owners and the third world a slave.  I grew up in an liberal progressive town, so I grew up surrounded by forward thinking, intelligent, contemplative, reasonable people who would never treat another human being with such contempt.  I grew up thinking the best of people, thinking that my world was free of evil, that it had been conquered long ago and we were just beating back the devil last remains when we went to war.  I now realize that people do things for the wrong reasons, or don't do anything at all.  I was in a political debate with somebody about how the government literally LIED to us when they said that Iraq had WMD's.  She replied that "people make mistakes" and "you're not going to convince me, dude."  There are two very acute things wrong with this:

1. Our government is not allowed to make mistakes.  Going to war because of a LIE is the least acceptable thing we've done since the Japanese internment camps and dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Our government needs to be held accountable for fucking up the world.  We are not the world police and we have neither the obligation nor the right to interfere in everything we can squeeze a few drops of oil out of.

2. "You're not going to convince me, dude."  Quite honestly the most frustrating and stupid words I've ever heard uttered by a person I considered a critical thinker.  The point of debate is not to convince anyone, it's to learn and become more worldly, and to hopefully come to a legitimate, intelligent, and compromising conclusion.  If I wanted to force my beliefs upon you, I'd file legislature or join a fucking religion.

Please, wake up.  I implore you.  Read more than they teach you in the books, and question EVERYTHING.  Few people have your best interests at heart, and none of those who do are politicians, the media, or the rich.

Separation of Church and State

I understand that the US is primarily a christian nation, but we did agree to separate church and state and there are two major things that are not adhering to this old belief.

1. Abortion - Literally everyone I know who is pro-life is also a dogmatic religious person.  This is not a coincidence.  Christianity obviously frowns upon killing, and believes that as soon as the uterus is conceived, the child is alive.  I'm a little shaky on that, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.  However, scientifically, the child is about as alive as the skin cells and hair that fall off my body every second.  If you argue that it is the capability to produce life, how about when a man busts a nut, or a woman has her period?  Both acts dispose of cells that could have otherwise birthed a child.  I'm not sure what I'm missing here, but the pro-life option is only based upon religious dogma, not scientific reasoning.  Church, not state.

2. Gay Marriage - Honestly, the fact that this is even a topic that's still up for debate is just preposterous.  Obviously, gay marriage is totally okay.  It's a necessary financial tie, and though the institution of marriage was founded on religion, they should still be allowed to be legally wed.  Also, it means just as much to them as anyone else, and if I fell in love with a girl only to be told that I couldn't marry her?  Yeah I'd be pretty fucking pissed.  So yeah, get your heads out of your asses, suck it up, and live and let live.

There are plenty of other issues, but these are two major ones.  I know I might get slammed by some religious zealot who has brought it upon him or herself to invoke the wrath of God upon me, but honestly, people who act with hate wouldn't be getting to the upstairs club anyway, so bring it the fuck on.

Damn it's late.

O Lament, you bitter blasted soul
Read the pages of the windowpane
They speak "where has the day gone?"

The sun sets, the flocks settle

I collapse into the down of heaven

The emptiness beside me freezes my heart

69 Page Views

Just saying that that's something I can live with.  First milestone, HOO AH!

Atheism FTW?

According to the "National Longitudinal Study of Youth" and the scientific journal "Intelligence", atheists score on average 1.95 points higher than agnostics, 3.82 points higher than religiously liberal persuasions, and 5.89 points higher than dogmatic persuasions for Intelligence Quotients. There's your food for thought of the day.

"Good Night"

Those were the words uttered by my friend about an hour ago.  It's been far too long since a girl has said good night to me.  Not that those words haven't been said to me by a girl, but if you're anything like me you know the difference between saying the words "good night" and meaning all the implications behind that as well.  You can hear it in their voice, or see it in their smile.  You can feel it as their hand lingers in yours as it finally pulls away, or when the hug lasts just seconds longer than your standard hug.

And I really think she does mean it.  See, I'm in love with this girl.  If only she wasn't in New York, about six hours away from me, maybe our whole situation would be different.  I've known her for three years now, and at first she was just a face, now she's one of my best friends and I don't know what I would do without her.  I'm applying to transfer to a bunch of Ivy League schools for my sophomore year, and she's really been encouraging me every step of the way.  She's amazing and every day I talk to her, if only through a Facebook IMing session or through a phone call or Skyping or texting late into the night, it's the best part of my day.  She's the best part of my day.

Anyway, I don't know if it's pointless to pursue this girl.  I've turned down more than one prospective date just because I felt it would be wrong to date someone else while I'm in love with my best friend.  Is this bad?  Am I crazy for liking someone I probably can never be with?  I don't know, you tell me.

"Hey, I'm not trying to be a douche..."

STRONG INDICATION PERSON IS ABOUT TO BE A DOUCHE.

What I'm Actually Going to Write About

I just thought of how often people get a real look into someone else's life.  I think the anonymity of this will allow me to say what I feel and think unrestrained and hopefully that will be interesting to you.  I'll post things that I think or feel, my opinions on politics or whether that move sucked or not, or even some of my writing.

For example, I'm a democrat, The Social Network rocked, Devil sucked, I'm feeling that I partied a bit too hard tonight and I should probably go to bed soon.

Feel free to let me know what you think or feel, I always love to hear what people have to say.

Here's a poem I wrote

So I'm a bit of a writer and though I usually write stories, here's a poem.  Let me know what you think.

Dusty winds blow sheets of rain on a grey sunrise

The waters fade and green screams from the earth

A sight which was obscured by the lies of the devil and his brotherhood

Walk through the foliage of a newborn jungle

It is a man and his doppelganger

His reflection in his pool of thought

His left side brain firing neurons into the air beside him

They manifest in a phantasmagoric visage of beauty

A stream of life, the push and pull of the oceans

The eruption of volcanoes, cooling into new lands

The winds carving the earth, creating vistas beyond the wildest dreams

Cities built, shaping the earth in the eye of the beholder

The tempest cools into the rich golden fields of wheat

Vast mountains guard this sacred ground

Legions protect it, though they are but of men

Jealous curses break upon the defenses like water upon the shore

The man walks through his fields

Alone, yet surrounded by love and lovers

Knowing in his mind the one thing that saves his sanity

That this heart is forged by nature, that this sun will never set