Archive for June, 2004

Hey out there! Today, believe it or not, I’m ready to blog and feeling’ good about it. I’ll be the first to admit that over the last few weeks I’ve slacked off pretty badly in writing to… myself, but hey! This is life, and isn’t it grand. I had a small list of objectives that I wanted to meet in tonight’s blog, but I just wadded it up and tossed it across the room toward the trash can. Shucks, I missed. Anyway, I figured “what the heck” and decided that I’d get more out of blogging free style. My first paragraph will be all about stupid little things that some people might not now but might find useful. It addresses things across a wide array of topics, so brace yourself! If you don’t want to read it, just skip it. I’ll get more serious after the following paragraph.

Did you know there may be little things you didn’t know? See at the top of this page, in my current layout with the boy and chameleon, how there’s an open blue area near the bottom left beneath my logo? It looked really bad in Photoshop, and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it, so I write the word “Kanya” in it and faded it out all the way to 1% opacity. Most people don’t notice it (I’ve only had one person tell me they saw it) but it adds just enough visual depth to make everything blend. Believe it or not, without it, the image looks really different. Did you know I like goldfish? I’ve been slacking off on my goldfish eating though. I don’t want to say that I’ve become sick of them, or that their place in my heart has been displaced by something else, but those low fat lays chips are incredible. I like them more than the high-fat ones! They’re salty instead of greasy. Mmm, I like salt. Seriously, if you haven’t tried them, they’re great. Also, get them in the big bags. They don’t taste as good in the small ones that you might get with a tray at a restaurant (like subway). Tonight I said I’m freestyle blogging. I don’t do this much. I usually have a brief written script of topics to write about and I follow it closely. On the nights I blog freestyle, I have no idea what I’m going to write before I write it. And how do I write these anyway? I seem to spell most words perfectly but miss blatant errors. Blame it on spell – check. I’m writing this page in microsoft word. Did you know that if you open that program and type “microsoft” in it that it auto-capitalizes it for you? How retarded. Anyway, I hacked together a stripped-down version of my website that just consists of the top logo and the white box to type in. I load that html file up in word (yes, word can edit html files) and type away. It looks like I’m actually writing it in my website, so it helps with the whole mood thing. Ok, I’m done with that, now I’m going to talk about some cool stuff.

Live; thoughts? Yes, actually. As dumb as it sounds asking my self questions and actually answering them, I do think a little bit here and there about my past and future. Life is great, but so many people waste it on empty stupidities. I, for one, can quickly attest to how easy it is to fall in the trap of wrapping your life around one object (games, computers, social groups, school, or something else). I think back on my past and simply groan when I think of some of the things I wasted great amounts of time on. I can’t get that time back, but I can at least use it for my advantage by realizing that it was a waste of my life and trying to stay away from similar obsessive activities in the future. You can always look back on your past and instantly realize things you wasted your time, but it’s so much harder to realize these things in the present! Right now I’m trying to spend as much time in school as is needed to get A’s in all of my classes. Now that I’m thinking of going to medical school, my “all A’s priority” has shifted from “really important” to “vital”. I won’t be able to get into medical school without good grades, and if I don’t learn much in these classes I won’t do well on the mcats. Outside of that, I spend my free time adding these texts to my website for the personal archival of my thoughts, and I spend some time speaking with a few people on the instant messenger. I use an invitation-only buddy list with only about seven people on it. It’s my way of making sure I don’t waste much time. This is all good for now, but what will things be like in the future? It seems fairly easy for me to look twenty years in the future and pick out three scenarios and see my life easily fitting into one of the three, however I can’t at all imagine what my life will be like in 5 years. I’ll (hopefully) be kicking my own butt in medical school trying to get through it with high grades. If I specialize in dermatology, it’ll require that I graduate in the top few percent of my class. I guess I can picture vague things, but I don’t know where I’ll be living, staying, with whom, when, or if much will change. Way down the road though, I could see myself either here (in the US) married with a job and a home and all that. That’ll be possibility number one. I could also see myself single, having traveled somewhere far away with a long term goal, working every day but enjoying it. My third possibility, well, I can’t share that one. There are some things I withhold even from my own blog. Will I forget it? Possibly. If I do, then it didn’t happen. If it works out that way, then oh yes, I’ll remember it. I can’t spend too much time thinking about (or planning) my long term future because anything could happen in the next few years. I’m in a slingshot right now, going in circles. Because of my school, I’m going faster and faster, so I know that when I’m launched from the sling I’ll go father and farther, but as of now I can’t predict when the sling will release me, or in what direction I will go! How’s that for a metaphor?

Does anyone know what Frag means? I didn’t. I’m stupid. I do now though! Then again, I’m weird like that. My friend (Snipe) asked me to send him quake2 earlier and after it finished and right before I signed off I said to him “happy fragging!” He then proceeded to ask “What is a frag?” to which I quickly replied “It’s a kill”… but I then started to question myself on the exact definition of the word frag. What does frag mean? What does it mean to be fragged? Where did the word frag come from? Am I repeating the same question using different wordings purely to up my google page rank? I decided to set out on a quest to find where the word frag came from. Though it is shaped and sounds vaguely like an offensive word, I didn’t think that’s where it came from. A little research paid-off though! I discovered that the word “frag” first started commonly circulating among soldiers in the Vietnam war era. They would say that someone was “fragged” if they were completely torn up (brutally killed) by a fragmentation grenade. Hence, the modern term “frag” and its common use “Yo! I just fragged 200 people in Quake2!”

I have a sound clip for you! I haven’t done one of these in a while so I decided to give it a shot. I’m a little afraid that this sound clip might not go over too well though. I’m posting it for its associative value and not the value or quality of the song itself. It’s one of the main theme songs in that Korean movie I mentioned a few posts ago entitled “The Classic”. If you’ve seen the movie, listening to this song might make you feel like you’ve just been kicked in the chest and can only exhale. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll most likely feel nauseated at the disgustingly high voices of the two men singing the Korean vocals to the song. How embarrassing. As a final gesture to peel every last little bit of dignity from my skin, I now provide the link for you to download this song [here]. However, since it is one of those temporary things, this link will go dead in a few days. I’m going to start doing things this way now because when I leave files up for more than a week or so, Google gets them and people leach them and it’s no fun. If you haven’t seen the asian arcade file I posted a few days ago, too late. I just deleted it. I’m the webmaster! I can do that sort of stuff. Mua ha ha ha…

On a more serious note, I’m having a hard time in calculus class getting people to keep their eyes on their own papers. It’s so stupid; whenever a test or quiz day comes, this guy pushes people over so he can try to sit next to me. On exam days I’ll usually pull some lame fast trick like setting my backpack in one seat, then sitting down in another one five minutes later. At a certain point I wouldn’t mind at all if he said, “hey, can I copy your paper?” (to which I would reply no)… but there’s something so insulting about him trying to copy it without asking. I screwed him up pretty bad on the last quiz though. I wrote down my final answers backwards on my quiz, then at the very last second after he turned his in I wrote the correct answers down and scratched the backwards ones out. We haven’t gotten the quiz back yet. I can’t wait to see what happens! If this continues to be a problem, or if I do it again and I see that for a fact the guy next to me copied my (reversed) answer, it’ll be solid proof it was totally, blatantly, and obviously cheating. He’ll get his butt failed from the course. Since it’s a small college he probably wouldn’t get kicked out, but at least I won’t have to deal with him in class any more.

Pave the rainforest! I heard on the radio today one of Kerry’s recent speeches. I heard so many awesome points on the radio show this morning (go Glenn Beck!) that I’d might as well recap what I heart. Bush’s ideas are pretty radical. He has an amazing large vision, and he’s trying with all he’s got to achieve it without everything going crazy. He’s giving freedom to oppressed countries and giving freedom to the people in the US and he’s shooting for so many really, really big things. In twenty years, he will either be known as an incredible president, or an awful president. He won’t go down in the history books as a gray zone. His plans will either work over the next ten years, or they will fail; the outcome will be the determining factor on his historical significance. Now, let’s look at Kerry in his speech. He pushed three ideals for his “vision”. He wants to raise minimum wage, give universal healthcare, and become energy-independent. I don’t even want to touch that last one. It’s so stupid and dumb it’s just like… blah. “You go for that energy independence!” He’ll show the whales that he’s cool. So is that his “vision”? I need to move on. Let’s look at the middle one next. Universal healthcare. This is what Kerry said (quoting from memory) “I want to give every American the same kind of healthcare that congressmen give themselves!” All right, let’s see here. Tonight I’m not going to spend much time on this, so I’m not going to even touch the reasons why the very concept of universally giving away healthcare is ridiculous. Let’s just look at the facts. So, the guy wants to give everyone the same healthcare congressmen get. You know how expensive medical stuff is, now imagine how much healthcare costs for a single congressman. Now, multiply that by 300,000,000 people. That’s a lot of money… where exactly will that come from? Next topic. Raising minimum wage from 5$ to 7$. (I’m rounding for simplicity). Kerry says that this will provide “unfortunate” Americans with a way out of poverty. Are people really brainless enough to not see what’s going to happen with this stuff? Ok, let’s take Kerry’s money. His conservative estimates say that he’s worth about one billion dollars. At the current rate of 5$ an hour, he can employ 100,000 people on a fulltime salary! However, if the minimum wage goes to 8$, he can only employ 62,500 people. So, about two thirds of the people are slightly better off (earning another 2$ an hour) while 37,500 people are now unemployed. Over a third of the already-low income earning people just lost their jobs so the rest of the people could make 4k more a year. Now that is “unfortunate”. Thanks Kerry.

Ok so I vented, now it’s time to rest. I’m still sick (acoo!) so I’m going to go to bed early again. Tomorrow I have my solid day of uber-boring classes. Well, I like calculus, because my professor is really cool. I don’t like my psychology class because the professor is an airhead, and my computer programming class is dumb because my professor is really anal. It’ll work out though; I’ll get A’s in all of them. Well, until next time, stay safe. You have a good one! -Scott

I will blog in a slightly different manner tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t even planning on blogging tonight. However, something interesting happened a few hours ago that I thought would be really cool to share. Yeah, it’s small, silly, insignificant and meaningless, but I still think it’s worth sharing. So, sit back and relax, you’re about to take a dive into the mind of Scott.

Tonight I went to dinner and a movie with my mom, dad, sister, sister’s friend, and sister’s (and my old) track coach. My sister had her friend to talk to, and the track coach mostly spent time talking with my parents. Although I may have seemed a little “alone” with my family and all the people around me, I was happy to get out of the house. I wanted to stay home and get work done, but once I left I realized that I could use the time of escorted quietness. I’ll break in for a second and comment on this phenomena. When I go places by myself, I don’t have time to really think about things alone and by myself because when I actually am alone I have too much responsibility and too many things to distract me. When I go to a movie alone, though it is very relaxing and nice every once and a while, I keep having to feel my pockets to make sure I didn’t drop my car keys or lose my wallet (even though I’ve never done either of these things before). What am I getting at? When I’m taken with a group of people that ignore me, I’m free to do what I want without having to worry about things that I otherwise would on my own. I’m doing a horrible job of explaining this, and I’m totally messing up the flow of this blog, so I’ll just go back to where I was. I went into the movie, watched the movie, and then the movie ended. It’s time to go home. I stood up and made my way for the exit…

As soon as I got into the hall, there were people everywhere. Two movie theaters just dismissed their occupants and a long line was waiting to get into another theatre. There were people standing or running all around us as we were heading for the exit in the relatively narrow hallway. I knew that my family was going to go to the car, and I knew where it was parked, so I figured I could get separated with no problem since I could just meet them at the car. I meandered through the crowds of people and decided to use the restroom. A little later, after washing my hands, I looked around for the paper towels. There weren’t any. They only had those machines that blow hot air (which are practically useless and take ten minutes to dry your hands with). I decided “ehh, they’ll dry” and headed for the door to exit the men’s restroom. I grasped the large metal handle and pulled but my wet hands quickly slipped off the handle making a quiet “thump” as the door slammed. I opened it again very quickly, started to walk out of the restroom, but something… I… my eyes are focused in front of me. No, it’s… Where… I… I was staring right into someone’s eyes. To say our eyes were locked would be a dire understatement. I can’t even try to explain it. Ok, maybe I can. “Our gazes were transfixed and interweaved in another dimension.” It was really weird, I lost my body for a second. Finally, my central nervous system started working normally again. I realized I was staring right into someone’s eyes… but something was weird. I felt like I was hypnotized… stuck in a stare for what seemed half an hour. I know it couldn’t have been more than half a second. This girl was looking right at me, and I was stuck staring in her eyes. She seemed about my height, from what I remember. She was wearing a dark shirt and had shoulder-length flat black hair. Her eyes seemed curved in a very unique way; I think had to be mixed Asian because I couldn’t tell where she was from. She smiled… From what I remember, she seemed really pretty, but I can’t think of a way to describe “why” in words. Although our eyes were locked, I was still walking forward, and inevitably had to look forward. I peeled my eyes away from hers and saw the exit doors ahead of me. I walked slowly toward them trying to process what had happened. I’ve come across people here and there that look at me before, but this isn’t like that, this was really weird. You can imagine that once the pieces of what happened started falling together in my head, a million thoughts raced through my mind. Here is a person I have never met and know nothing about, yet our eyes locked and she smiled. Although this could be due to a number of reasons, I think the obvious possibility is very clear. I remember walking slowly towards the exit thinking about possibly pausing and turning around and going back to meet her just to put my mind to rest. I kept walking toward the exit… I was chanting to myself “you’re a coward, you’re a coward, you’re a coward…” but I kept walking toward the exit… I honestly remember thinking “Come on Scott, you’re letting your blog readers down!” as I took the last stride to the door. I stopped, and reached for the large horizontal handle. As I touched the cold metal I felt a chill run down my spine and heard the metallic “clink” of an unlocking panel. I cracked the door open and was about to open it all the way when… I hesitated. I can’t… no, I just can’t do this. I have to at least look back. I slowly twisted my neck and looked behind me at where the girl was standing. I saw her, and she was staring at me still. The lock of our eyes startled me and I went into the fight of flight mode. Too bad I chose the second option. I swung open the door and walked outside. I started thinking “oh man Scott, you’re so stupid, you just lost it all” when I saw my dad motion for me to listen as he said “Hey Scott, can you run in and get the umbrella? We left it in th-”

I took off running back inside. My feet scuffled on the carpeted floor as I meandered through the crowd running back to where I saw that girl. She wasn’t there. She… she must have started walking somewhere else. I looked around twisting my neck sporadically trying to soak in visual data from all directions. I stood on my toes and tried to look over the heads of the people taller than me. I couldn’t see anything. I ran down one hall… backtracked… ran down another… then my hope turned to disappointment and defeat once I realized that she was gone. I don’t know who the person was, I don’t know why she was looking at me, I don’t know what about it made it so strange in my mind, I don’t know why I wanted to find her, and I don’t know what I would have done if I had found her. It was one of those things that happened too quickly for proper logic to mesh into, and it was too strange for common sense to handle. For those of you who are concerned, yes, I did find the umbrella… but something about that stare and those eyes… I’ll have trouble getting over that one. I think the thought will randomly overtake my mind several times over the next few weeks. Ok, now I feel dumb. I can’t believe I’m actually contemplating writing this in my blog. It’ll be the tenth time this month I started writing a large blog and then had thoughts of erasing it and moving on. Some things I want to share, some things are too personal to share, and some things are too personal to share but I want to share them anyway. I guess if you’re reading this on my blog, I decided to post it. I’ll let a few other people read it and if they vote that it’s fine to blog, I’ll blog it.

Interact! Do you think I messed up? What do you think I should have done differently? Give details! Submit your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

Well it’s late and I’d better get to bed. I’m still sick. Have a good one! –Scott

Hey everyone! This is Scott. You remember me, right? I’m the guy who used to blog here. Yeah well anyway, I’m blogging again believe it or not. I’m going to apologize for the absence in my blogging for the last few days (weeks), for I have been out of town and unable to blog. Well, I’ve been able to, but I chose not to. I was on vacation for goodness’ sake! Anyway, I’m here now and that’s all that matters, right? Whoa, that was weird. I’m in a huge thunderstorm and the power just went out around the house, but I’m on a laptop. Woohoo! As long as the power comes up within two hours or so, I’ll be able to finish this blog and stay on the computer! At any rate, it’s time to write baby. With no further adieu, I give you my blog.

I know what you’re going to say. “No Scott, you’re not going to talk about another movie are you?” Stop for a second. Listen to me. The movie I’m about to talk about is incredible. If you think you’re somehow better than all of this and want to skip reading about a movie then just skip it. I, however, think that the movie I just saw was so good that it merits a chunk of a blog. All right, so what is this movie? It is the movie entitled “The Classic” and it is a wonderful story that happens over three time periods. It involves passion, hate, betrayal, love, and war. The Korean war, actually. Yes, this movie is Korean. I can’t say enough good things about this movie. I would love so much to try, but there’s nothing I can do that will do it justice. Please, if you’re one to take a suggestion from a guy like me, I not only recommend this movie, I urge you to see it right away. I believe it’s readably available over the net, and it’s easy to buy on Ebay for a few dollars (it’s cheap from overseas) or Amazon. So you know, the Chinese repackaged ones that are sold on Ebay are usually professionally pirated copies, so just know that when you buy it. If no matter what you try you cannot download this movie off of the net, talk to me. I might be able to hook you up.

Interjection. The power was going on and off for a while, but now it just cut off for good. I figured I had a few hours on my laptop battery, but no internet. I wanted to check the weather, so I brought a car battery in my room and hooked it up to a 400 watt power inverter and used it to power my laptop and my cable modem. I was glad to see that the cable line was still up, so I was able to connect to the internet and check things out. There isn’t much storm activity around here, it’s just this one super-concentrated cell of hail, lightning, and heavy winds. It took out a TON of power. All around south Orlando the power is out. It’s weird; my dad was out driving home and said there were no lights for miles. This’ll take a while to get working. But hey, I guess it’s a perfect time to blog. So, with the quiet hum of the inverter fan behind me and the silent trickling of rain mixed with distant thunder, I will continue my blog.

The story was purely beautiful. I hate liking the kind of movies that I do. Face it, although I’m about as heterosexual as they come, it seems that I only like romantic girl movies =o) For those of you who are new readers or perhaps haven’t paid much attention to my writings in the past, I’ll watch pretty much any movie out there, but the ones I really enjoy are most often romantic dramas with Korean style plots. If you think about it, “The Classic”, “My Sassy Girl”, and “Lovers Concerto” (three of my favorite Korean romantic dramas) involve people who are in their mid twenties. The average age and style of “dating” (in the movies, at least) is really interesting. In the movies they’ll make references to thinks like kissing, for example, and one girl will say to another “have you ever kissed anyone before?” It’s not a strange question, but it does look a little funny when the question between these two mid-twenties girls is replied with “no, have you?” Compare this style of respect (for a lack of a better word) for the opposite sex with a movie like Mean Girls (for pure comparison, and I hope few of you have seen it) where these ninth grade girls are shown rolling around in their beds with boys taking their clothes off. Immaturity seems to be overwhelming in this curious “race to nothingness”, but I really enjoy and place a lot of value in the pure concept of common sense and the simple ideologies that follow in its footsteps. Ok, where was I. Oh yes! New paragraph.

Why don’t thinks like this happen any more? I know I’m breathing way too much into the plots of movies, but to say that I envy the conversations between some of the characters would put it lightly. I also know that these fairytale endings hardly come true, and the processes in getting there are anything but possible, but oh how wonderful it would be to believe that something this beautiful would be possible. As far as couples conversing back and forth go, I think that one of the most incredible things is that when both sides actually stop and think before they speak. I think that this is important in all areas of communication, but especially in relationships! Think and speak softly. Even if you’re mad, frustrated, or really sad, being able to convert your thoughts into simple words and being able to express them clearly is a wonderful skill. When you’re heated emotionally, for what ever reason in whatever way, the natural human tendencies are to talk quickly and speak without thinking. It’s so important that you don’t do this! If you can stop and think and then say what you want to carefully, you can make things so much more special. In the classic there was a problem between two people that could not possibly be together because of certain reasons (I can’t give the plot away) and they had to break up. One line (or concept, I guess) that really made an impact on me is when the guy and the girl met “for the last time” (by accident, sort of) and the girl wanted to turn and run, but the guy grabbed her wrist and said “No, wait, I don’t want to end it like this” and they went and talked for a few more moments. I thought that just, so cool ^_^ Also, if someone talks to you, you don’t have to instantly reply. A five or six second delay between each side of the conversation may seem a little odd at first, but with the advantage of a few seconds of clear thought it can turn a simple conversation into a wonderful and memorable experience, for good or for worse. Yes, I know I just used a marriage line right there. In fact, I think I’ll talk about that next.

I was watching Oprah the other day and they had the whole cast of Shrek 2 on the show. By the way, I don’t watch Oprah that often. Anyway, I was absolutely amazed at a short conversation between Cameron Dies (the voice of Princess Feona aka Mrs. Shrek) where they both agreed that marriage is outdated in today’s society. I was just like… “what did they just say?!” They basically said that “so much time has passed” since the institution of marriage was created that it is no longer valid or useful in today’s society. Cameron said something along the lines of “how do I know that the man I marry will be someone I’ll want to wake up next to in ten years, or even ten weeks! My tastes change often, and I don’t want to get trapped by some outdated institution of marriage.” Before the show I thought of Cameron Dies as a complete air head without two brain cells to rub together; I overestimated her. Do I have a problem with her statement? You bet I do. Listen, if you’re restless and want to keep leaving your boyfriend or girlfriend for a new one because you get tired of them and don’t like the idea of being “locked”, fine! Don’t get married. Your problem with marriage comes from the fact that it requires responsibility and follow-through, something you OBVIOUSLY do not have. Just because you may be a shallow person and don’t like the fundamental concept of marriage for this reason does not mean that the fundamental concept is flawed or in any way outdated. The difference between then and now is that in the past, people had convictions, morals, and social pressure to do what is right and to take responsibility for their own actions. Whereas now people can do practically anything without anyone else noticing or caring leaving people open to go on talk shows and talk about preposterous ideas without serious proposition. I was reading the story of one guy (I wish I could find his blog again!) who took a Spanish class in college. Near the end of the semester he was given an evaluation sheet that asked lots of ethnic questions and one specifically was “Are you more likely to hire someone of a different ethnic background after taking this course?” to which he answered no. In his mind, he had no problem with other ethnicities to begin with, and the Spanish class made no difference. However, the teacher exploded on him, because evidentially he was the only person in the class who answered this way. The professor during class called him a (quote) “naive racist”. Where am I going with this? I’m saying that a hundred years ago people would say things that are wrong and they would get attacked. Now, people say things that are wrong and no one cares. However, if you try to filter-out a voice of wrongness these days, people absolutely explode in the name of “discrimination”. Speaking of political issues, check the next paragraph out.

I was shocked, disgusted, and abhorred at what I saw tonight. While waiting in line to buy popcorn for the movie “The Notebook” that I saw tonight (a decent movie, actually) I looked to my left and saw a huge line wrapping all the way down the hall and back and dumping into movie theatre number one. I was amazed at how many people were there, and also a little amused at the types of people standing in line. A lot of them were gay men and women, and quite a few of the people in line had purple or green hair. I had to ask. Since I was only fifteen feet away from the start of their line, I had to ask. “Hey, what movie are you all waiting for?” They all looked over with this empty look like “you don’t know?” as one of them spoke up and replied “Fahrenheit 9/11″ I guess that came out tonight. Anyway, talk about nasty. For those of you who have been living in a freakin’ coma for the last few months, this movie is made by a man (whose name I don’t want to type, because I’ll get too many fanatic left-wing goolers) who is called a “Liberal thinker”. I’m sorry; I guess I didn’t get the memo that people were suddenly incompetent of thinking on their own. Anyway, he’s the maker of “Bowling for Columbine” that released a little while back blaming the shootings at Columbine high school on guns. Yes, that’s right, guns. I think I already talked about that. Moving on, Fahrenheit 9/11 is all about the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. You know the terrorists that hijacked the planes and flew them into the towers? Yeah, well this movie says that was George Bush’s fault. I’m sorry, but some “Liberal thinker” blaming George Bush for the world trade center attacks is like Rosie O’Donnell blaming spoons for making her fat. On a slightly different note, I was watching Fox news a few days ago and saw an amazing interview between two people and a newscaster. They were debating whether or not our Military at the time of the 9/11 attack, given knowledge at the time the plans took off, would have time to have caught up with the planes and shot them down. The final result was that “No, if we only found out as soon as they launched we could not have gotten to them in time, but we can now.” Then the liberal guy in the argument went on to say that George Bush is to blame for our Military not being able to reach those planes in time. I’m sorry, isn’t he busy rebuilding our Military after Bill Clinton tried to dissolve it into nothing? Beside that, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? You’re blaming George Bush for not being able to shoot down those aircraft. Do you have any IDEA what would have happened to George Bush if he had shot down three civilian aircraft? Holy crap, I can’t even fathom what would have happened to him. Think about it. The president shooting down three civilian-loaded aircraft…. I can’t believe there are actually people out there who believe and promote these stupidities. Uhhg, I can’t talk about this any more, it just makes me sad.

For those of you who are in denial, we are actually in a real war in Iraq. And I only mean that in the sense of bombing and invading a country. I’m amazed when people say we are making no progress in Iraq. There are people out there that have no clue what it happening. I just, it’s amazing to me. They walk out with no idea with what has been happening over there. I’m not even talking about the portions of buildings devoted to restraining and raping innocent women, and I’m not even referring about the machines that were designed to grind-up people while they are still alive. I’m talking about the simple murders of Iraqi citizens. The people in charge of the murders and inhuman acts are the ones being targeted and taken out. The people who are marching in protest of a war, I’m sorry, you call leaving this alone “peace?” Millions (literally) of Iraqi Muslims have been saved thanks to our efforts. You know in the movie “Independence Day” the group of people who stand on top of the tower with cardboard signs saying “Peace!”? Well the alien ship lowers right on top of them and blows them up to smithereens. That’s what I think of these people. Hey, you’re a passivist? That’s great, but it’s ridiculous. Passivism is a wonderful idea, but it only works in one form: total passivism. Passivism only works if everyone is a passivist.

I’ve been out of town for a while. What have I been doing? Well my family and I went to Amelia Island (on the north-east coast of Florida) for six days. What did I do? I took my laptop, that’s what I did! I would say I went to the beach for a week and never got wet, but I can’t because I got rained on ^_^ Anyway, it was nice to have a little bit of relaxation and time away from things. I lucked out with being right next to a condo that had a wireless DSL modem, for I was able to hop right on it and get highspeed internet all week. I did some IP scans every few days but never saw an other computers on the network, so I came to the conclusion that whoever owned the thing must have been out of town. Anyway, I used the connection to download Shrek 2 (yay!) and Quake2. For those of you who don’t know about it, Quake and Quake 2 are really cool classic computer games. Quake I was written for DOS, and Quake 2 was written for windows 95. They’re incredibly small and incredibly light computer games, capable of high resolutions and frame rates even on 100 MHz machines with 16mb of ram and no video card to speak of. The light requirements are what made it so perfect for me. My laptop is nothing special, but this game was perfectly smooth at high resolutions. Although it does have a single player mode, it’s best known as an internet-based first person shooter. You can download the demo by googling around. The demo is not hindered in any way. It just doesn’t come with all the maps. The maps are downloaded automatically when you connect to servers. In other words, when you download the demo it’s the same thing as the full version. In final words: it’s free =oD

My time doing nothing on the trip drilled one concept deep into my mind: I do not want to retire early. I don’t care if I make billions by the time I’m thirty, I want to work until I’m unable to. People in America seem to aspire to some dream of being able to quit work and do nothing. What a miserable life! For me at least, with my personality, I like little more than having a goal to reach for and the work required to get there. I guess this also fits in the short term as far as school goes. I’ve only been out of school for about a week (mid-semester (summer semester) break) but I’m really missing it. I have to have something to be working on. Even though I don’t like the work itself, I love doing the work, as funny as that sounds. I think med school will be enjoyable torture, and I think that working (in the jungle?) would be rewarding exertion.

Well, I’m going to go on and wrap up this post so I can go swimming. That’s right, it’s almost midnight and my sister and her friend are over and the power is still out. They’re in the pool, I have nothing better to do (hey, the power’s out and I’m going to save my batteries for later) so I’d might as well hop in too. Don’t worry, I’ll blog again soon. Have a good one! –Scott

Yes, I blogged somewhere else tonight! Actually, it’s been a weird day. Here’s the URL:

http://www.aimforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7116

If it gets removed from that location for the admins… I’d better post it’s contents here, though I do hope you’ll comment here instead of there ^_^

REMEMBER! This was written to be inserted in a giant AIM FORUM where everyone is OBSESSIVE with stupid screen names =op So, knowing that, here we go:

Do you really have such an empty and meaningless life?

Pretext: Hi, my name is Scott. You may be offended by what you read, but I beg of you to not take this post too personally. I am writing this in concern with no pun or offense intended. Some of you may know me as the writer of the cracking programs AimPoo and Venomcrack. I have made a few (frankly disturbing) observations over the last few days and I know that this document most likely will not get taken seriously or may be removed shortly after posting, but I feel it is my obligation to you (the reader) to write it. Forgive my writing skills, I have a difficult time collecting my scattered thoughts and placing them on a single page.

Do you really have such an empty and meaningless life? Tonight I spent a little while reading over some of random threads on this AIM forum website and others like it. I was shocked, amazed, and simply abhorred at what I would read over and over again. There are people out there, so many people, who clench an unhealthy and inhuman view on this “messenger” that so many of us are familiar with. I watched one post as a little boy asked how he could get a special screen name so he could be ‘elite’. I saw this same type of post over and over, from countless different people. I could not help but gasp at the realization that there are so many people out there that will do anything and everything for a simple string of characters that is used as their identification on an internet messaging program. Over and over I kept asking myself, “Do people really base the value of their lives on the type of screen name they have?” The truth of the answer is more disturbing than the question: yes. Yes, there are people out there that will stoop to incredible lows to get a screen name. Yes, there are people who will practically anything to get a combination of letters for their identification handle. Yes, there are people who earnestly believe that their messenger identification handle somehow amounts to their self worth and value as a person.

However, this was only the first half of my unsettling discoveries. Some may argue that my point comes from insanity, but I think it derives from an epiphany. I only shortly wondered (baffled in amazement) at the reasons behind why people wanted some special screen name when the answer slowly faded into my realization. These people do not want the screen name. The screen name by itself is useless and meaningless, is it not? These people want the recognition, respect, and admiration that may come along with it. I see no other reason for anybody to spend so much of their life circling around such a narrow obsession. The truth doesn’t change the facts though; people respect those with special screen names. With this being the underlying motivation behind people wanting to obtain one, the whole concept of owning special instant messenger screen names is little more than memorabilia worth it’s immeasurable weight in respect from others. But wait, if you stopped someone on the street and told them that you spent two solid weeks of your life working to get a screen name, would they admire you? Would they congratulate you? Would they respect you? Would they even care enough to listen to you? The only people who care, the only people who respect you, the only people who could possibly admire you are those people who are entrapped in the same circle of narrowness as you are. The groups of instant messenger users who are obsessed with the service can be thought of as a walled community. They are more or less completely detached from the rest of the world in their ideology and they are self feeding, growing on each other. Propagation of your kind is a byproduct of the way you’re causing yourself to grow inadvertently by the endless cycle of “eliteness” being respected and admired as the ultimate highpoint of a person’s world, when in actuality it’s the ultimate epitome of an empty life.

You may be wondering where I fit in all of this. You can see by my information that I have a three letter screen name (KLP). I even wrote screen name crackers before. I wrote AimPoo because I wanted a project to work on to learn C#.net for work, and I wrote Venomcrack because I really wanted to lean how to write programs in Python language. I decided (in both cases) that I wanted to learn a new language, so the project I picked to get my started was a screen name hacker. I have never run anybody else’s racking software before, and I have never hacked a screen name with software I did not write, and the only times I run the software I write is when I’m debugging. I’m approaching this AIM screen name possession topic from the opposite direction than most of you are; I think the differences in our views are obvious.

So what’s the problem? As I look out upon these people and read their posts, my heart aches in pain and my mind longs for them to be hit with the realization that what they are doing is tiptoeing on the edge of an endless downward spiral. I see some people who are incredibly smart, far surpassing me in intelligence and knowledge, who waste their lives twiddling in the immaturity of obsessing over screen names, who pass their years mingling in silly arguments, and who and rot their own minds obsessing over meaningless dust. I really think that these people should find a better use for their talent, their mind, and their life! As far as social status, I think that eliteness is worthless in life. The concept of eliteness is not one of being great; it’s one of being seen. It is nothing more than a social ladder that uses computers and keyboard instead of footballs and pompoms. Some may see it as eliteness, but I see it as emptiness; the horrifying waste of a human mind and the unrecoverable loss of years of a person’s life.

lease, tell me honestly. If you’re reading this post, you’re most likely a regular visitor of an instant messenger forum who spends the hours of their life frivolously wasting the minutes they breathe trying to amount to greatness through the path of emptiness. Tell me, do you really have such an empty and meaningless life?

Sincerely, Scott.

I’m still out of town… I should be back some time next week X_x

btw: check [THIS] out!

ALSO: I gave away my old screen name “RTS”!
It was actually by accident ^_^ Want to know how?
Check out the top few lines of chatbot.py from my next link.
In the python code I left my rts screen name / password
that I used while testing it… oh well =o\
(How embarrassing; I’m such an idiot)

VENOMCRACK: new version! =o) [here]

I WILL BE USING THIS SCREEN NAME FOR NOW: “KLP”

Good day, good morning, good evening, or good night, depending on where you are in the world right now. I hope you’re having, about to have, or have had a great day! With the simple greeting formalities out of the way, I’ll begin by saying how nice it is to be back. It feels good to be blogging again. The time I spent away from updating these chronicles of my life was short (barely over a week) but it sure seemed like a long time while I was living in them. I kept thinking about my blog, my writings, and the people who read them. I’d feel the urge to blog at night but the pangs of regret weren’t enough to overcome my simple laziness. I didn’t feel bad about it until I’d be in bed… only then did I realize how much I was cheating myself by not allowing my mind to speak out from my body. Throughout my daily life I do mostly routine things. I wake up, I go to work, I do mental work at work, I go to school, I do a lot of mental work at school, I come home, and I do homework. After a while, your brain does all the work and your mind sifts through the cracks of the wasted idle time you so desperately longed for in the past and you’re left with a numbing emptiness. These little blogs are therapeutic for me. Someone just today mentioned that I seem to shift in my reasoning for writing these silly little blurbs. People go back and forth arguing (for or with me) saying that my blogs are written for my own enjoyment, or that they’re written to entertain others. It doesn’t really matter much to me. Even if I wrote them purely for other people to read, I certainly like the way they make me think and the way they let me relax and type. I like to blog, so I blog. No one can argue with that! In fact, I’d much encourage you to try the same. Even if it’s popping up notepad and jotting a paragraph in a text file every night and saving it on your computer, it’d be something worth trying. If you’re thinking “but Scott, my life’s boring, I don’t have anything to write about!” then don’t let those words escape your tongue! Look at me, look at my website. It’s not spectacular, but its good a good quarter million words of blogs, and I can tell you my life is not exactly the most spectacular. There are fun things out there, let’s take a look.

I saw some movies lately! Oh yes, and they were three American movies in a real movie theatre at that! I even have gone with girls. Ok, so it’s kind of pushing it to reference my mom and sister like that, but at any rate you should be quite impressed I’ve been getting out of the house this summer! A few weeks ago I saw Shrek II. I really, really liked that movie! I thought some of it was a little crude (passing so much gas in a bathtub that it becomes a bubbling and steaming hot tub was a tad on the over-immature side) but hey, that’s the Shrek that America has come to grow to love. You know, Shrek didn’t seem to be the main focus of the sequel this time. The talking donkey didn’t even get all the attention, nope, a large chunk of the movie was centered around the strange yet curiously irresistible “puss in boots”. Yes, mix the voice of Antonio Banderas with a ferocious yet cuddlable orange feline and you get a fun character that well merits its time basking in the spotlight. You’ve read about puss in boots in other blogs and seen him everywhere (it’s amazing how he’s smothered over the front pages of deviantart these days) so I won’t go on and on about that. However, I will give you some advice. If you haven’t seen Shrek II, go check it out! I certainly enjoyed it. Now, on to my second movie, I saw “The Day After Tomorrow”. I have to talk about this one, it’ll get it’s own paragraph! So, moving right along to my third movie and the one I saw today, “Harry Potter and Escape from Alcatraz… or something like that. I’ll say, I’m not exactly the type of person who would have seen this movie on my own, but today I was invited to go see it with someone and I must say, I thought it was actually pretty interesting. Something that I thought was absolutely amazing was the way that the Harry interacted with this big bird thing. Everyone keeps talking about how good the character / CG interaction is in “Lord of the Rings” between the cast and Gollum, but I think that this movie was much more impressive! I will admit that I was simply awe-struck when I watched Harry climb on top of this horse-sized beast with feathers. Yes, there was one scene that was poorly done (as he was flying over water) but overall I was incredibly impressed with how real it looked. The feathers moved in the wind and as he touched them… It’s hard for most people to instantly notice when something really good is done, but it’s so easy to notice when something looks really bad. Remember in Star Wars episode II when the guy was standing on top of the elephant-thing and as the elephant moved he moved and it just… looked really bad? I think I’ve made my point, I’ll move on. Oh yes! That movie…

“The Day After Tomorrow” will be the title of a mini-rant. For those of you who’ve been enlightened by my AIM rant, XP rant, or Pedestrians rant, this will simply be a continuation of the rantage that wrecks havoc on the centralized world. What am I saying? If you stop and think about what you’re actually being asked to accept, believe, or take as normal, you’ll be amazed by what you’ll discover. Anyway, I find myself sitting in a crowded movie theatre on a Friday night and in the opening scene, oh no! People have a base camp on an icy plane stretching as far as the horizon in all directions. The camp consists of a small house and a few pieces of equipment twenty feet away. All the sudden, oh no! There’s a cracking sound! The ice must be splitting. You guessed it, the polar ice cap they’re on just cracked and the crack is going right through the middle of the camp. The part that made me laugh audibly was when the camera zoomed out (vertically, looking downward but tilted just enough to see the horizon and a sunset) and you saw hundreds of miles of ice and, what a coincidence! The crack split the base camp perfectly in half. This crack extending for hundreds of miles just happened to travel through a twenty foot wide zone separating the two people living there causing one of them to have to jump across the divide. All right, so technically even though that was statistically improbably, it COULD have happened, right? Thirty minutes later I find myself sitting looking at the screen in curiosity. New York City just got hit with a tremendous tidal wave. The water level raises a few hundred feet and the main characters in the film are camping out in a library. All is finally calm… but wait. I look up, and I see a giant ship floating past the window in the inner city. I think I must have missed something, when did that get there? Anyway the few people trapped in the library are supposed to be the smartest of the smartest high school students who went to NYC for a math competition. They decide to build a fire. “We don’t have any wood!” seems to be the general consensus. They all stop and ponder “oh no, we’ll freeze to death, we don’t have any wood, what can we burn?” Then one of the people says “we’re in a library, let’s burn books” and they make the movie in a way that glorifies that idea like “wow what a genus! They don’t have and wood, so you burn books!” First of all, have you ever tried to burn paper before? I’m not going to even go there. But the thing that gets me is that they go in the library and there are at least fifty (wooden) tables and two hundred (wooden) chairs and what are they doing? They’re individually pulling books out of enormous wall-spanning (wooden) bookshelves. Aww, too bad no one has any FREAKING WOOD! Then, half way through the movie I wake up (I must have fallen asleep) to see the main character bring a wooden chair by the fireplace and smash it on the ground. “Finally! They figured it out!”, I thought to myself in relief, only to be bitterly disappointed when I saw him take the mesh backing off and say “Hey, I can make a snowshoe out of this!” Near the end of the movie in one of the climaxes, three people are bundled up in their winter clothes trying to make a hike from one place to another. They’re all walking on slow and they’re attached by a rope, but all the sudden you hear the sound of glass shattering and one of them falls through the ground. He’s ok, hanging from the rope, but he looks around and realizes he’s in the famous flight museum on New York and that they’re walking on top of the ceiling consisting of enormous glass panels. Suddenly you realize that “oh no! We’re all standing on thin glass!” and you know that if anything punctures that glass that it’ll shatter and you’ll fall through. Well, one of the guys starts sliding and drags the other three. So, what does Dennis Quad, the heroic savior do? He gets out his ice pick and slams it in the ground and stops the team from sliding to their deaths… wait a second, did he just thrust his ice pick into a sheet of thin glass? I’m not going to waste more time talking about the silly stupidities of the movie events, but there is one thing that really does amaze me. There are people out there that actually by this crap. They honestly believe that we’re headed toward impending doom and that the earth will die and that driving cars, wasting water, and eating food out of plastic containers will lead to an impending doom that will come in days without warning. Discover Magazine (a very liberal science news monthly magazine) wrote an article about the actuality of the “problem” that could arise because of “global warming theory” melting polar caps, releasing fresh water in the ocean, and throwing off our weather system. They reported that yes, weather changes may actually be possible by such an effect. And, even if we pretend the whole global warming stuff is true, at this rate it will come in a little less than half a million years. (I believe the estimated number was around 470,000 years). I just think it’s funny when the liberal media shoots themselves in the foot by telling it like it is (yes, I consider Discover magazine the liberal media). “Aww darn it! We killed our chances at getting more funding by actually telling them the facts!” And for those of you (that I know will come and post) asking “Scott, isn’t the ozone layer thinner at the south pole?” I’ll simply have to say, “Yeah, and it’s been there for thousands of years, oscillating like everything else in nature.”

Things seem to be slowing down as far as school goes. I really wish I could be in more classes (or harder classes that require more work) right now. I want to have something to do twenty four seven, and anything not relating to my future or something else “constructive” seems like a simple and pure waste of my life. That’s not to say that exhaustion mixed with laziness won’t overcome my sense of direction, but it certainly makes it hard to slack off and kill time when you actually have important things to do. As far as my career goes, yeah, I’m still thinking the same stuff. I’m still thinking about going somewhere far away. Someone recently (to whom in person I actually spoke of this) said that it seemed like an escape. Is it? What do you think? I certainly don’t know. The idea sounds really nice, but why? It’s certainly mixed thoughts with emotion intermingled with logic and tainted with fragments of aspired hopes and dreams, but would it really be a good idea for me to go to the middle of no where to help out complete strangers? I think it’d be incredible. I also know that it’d be an immense sacrifice. My choice if words is sad (I wish I could have larger mental vocabulary to pick from when I write) but ‘immense’ doesn’t even come close to it. If I decided to go all the way with this, it would practically be a complete sacrifice of me life. I’m not talking about material things. Sure, I’d only be making a few US dollars worth of money every year practicing medicine, but there’s a lot more to think about. In these impoverished and stranded (from civilization) areas of the world that don’t have any skilled (schooled) doctors, people die at young ages from treatable illnesses. I keep having this stray thought of someone (I don’t think of it as ‘me’, not yet at least) dying in the middle of no where from a gash in the leg that gets infected and kills the host and the family not finding out about it… ever. I might just disappear completely, then what? No more blogs, I can tell you that much… unless I pulled the Serial Experiments Lain act on you all so a little girl could sit at her family’s breakfast table and say “Mom, I just got an email from a person who died last week”

Enough of death, let me tell you about something interesting. Well, I think it’s interesting, though judging the comments lately peoples’ opinions differ greatly. I had a run-in with a guy who reads my blogs at school a few days ago. “Hey I read your last blog post…”, he looked at me and raised his hands with his palms facing each other and fingers spread slowly oscillating them vertically (like dribbling a basketball in slow motion) as he continued, “I was… ROLLING… on the ground when you wrote about that “Have a good one!” part.” I never met anyone quite like this who actually referenced (or initialized, at least) my blog in the part of a compliment. It was quite refreshing; most of the people who talk to me in real life about my blog condemn me for what I write, or people who compliment me about it are through email so it’s not quite the same. I guess I got my first real one a few days ago… but I guess it’s about time after a year of writing these things publicly ^_^

I’m tired and I should start heading off to bed. I have absolutely no plans this weekend so I have no clue what I’ll end up doing, but by going to bed before eleven I’ll at least make sure I’m energetic and full of rigor at whatever task, project, or innocent bystander I choose to attack! So, wishing you all a good day, I’m signing off. “You go have a good one!” –Soctt

A few moments ago my friend Tom messaged me “Scott, anything going on in your life lately?” to which I replied “have you read my blog?” He said “Yeah, its empty and nothing’s new.” … “My point exactly.” Tonight I’m going to cut right through the fluffy political relations crap and blog. I’m in no mood to “apologize” for not blogging in over a week. I am, however, somewhat saddened that quite possibly the longest amount of time between blog posts in over a year happened last week. I must be firm, I must be strong, and I must be faithful in continuing a string of blogs. No matter how rough it gets, no matter how tough it may be, no matter how narrow the stream of blogs may become, I’ll never abandon these writings. I have kept, keep, and will continue to keep blogging for my friends (though few), for my family (though they don’t read it), and for my self (bingo). My blog is my garbage disposal for leftover thoughts and broken fragments chipped off of my mind, my thoughts, and my life. It’s been too long since I’ve last been able to clean up my mind around the edges, so tonight will be quite an extra-ordinary entry.

I don’t exactly feel excessively energetic at the moment. My mind is quite dull and I feel more or less lethargic and apathetic towards… life. Yep, you guessed it: I went to bed late and woke up early. It’s amazing what sleep (or the lack of it thereof) will do to a human body and more impressively, a human mind. I notice a lot of people make the hasty jump to say “he’s depressed”, but I’ll go on and pre-correct those people and say that no, I’m not depressed. I just… well I am not quite satisfied with some things right now, and it’s a very long and frustrated road (or lava pit) between me and where I want to be those (few) areas of my life that I would like to change. Some things may seem a little sad, but I’ve always had things to do to occupy myself. Some things that may seem sad are completely meaningless when you have things to work on. The problems arise when you start doing nothing… Then your mind takes those thoughts to the opposite extreme. I am starting to shift and I think it’s because of the difficulty of college… or the lack of it. I’m taking the maximum amount of hours allowed for summer courses right now. Since one of my classes (calculus) is five credits I can only take three classes at the same time instead of four (since most classes are three credits). I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I desperately yearn for more and harder classes at school. I know that it will get harder in the future, but I’m wasting my life in these stupid prerequisite classes that cover preschool level material that I could condense into a total of four hours per week of reading per class. Calculus is fun because it’s a little challenging (I had it in high school but forgot most of it). I had my first test, which I got an A on, but my A combined with my quiz grades (3×100%) still only rank me at fifth in the class. I know, I know, you caught me. “Scott, you must not have gotten a hundred on the test.” No, thank you, I’m a failure, okay? Actually, there was a theory question at the end that just… it was really simple but I completely over thought it. I wrote a paragraph answer and it ended up not answering what the question actually asked. He just circled the paragraph and put a question mark by it, then took off five points. So, yeah, I have a 95. Will I shoot for that #1 student spot? I don’t know, that’s pretty geeky, and maybe if it were harder… I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. There are 16 quizzes, 4 tests, and a final exam. I’m about 1/3 of the way through the class.

While we’re at the subject of college, some interesting things happened lately. First off, I’d like to start out by saying that my Psychology teacher is a psycho. I swear. The other day she said something that just… I couldn’t even believe this lady finds the school every day. She talked about evolution. She said “Have you ever noticed that your grandmother is shorter than you? That’s because in today’s society there must be some need for taller people, so people today are taller.” I don’t know of there are people in the classroom that think like me and mentally scream “are you out of your mind?” For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll take a second to explain it. First of all, I believe in evolution, but it’s an entropic evolution. Things (over time) evolve from perfection towards imperfection, order to chaos. Looking back, the perfection was at creation. Yes, survival of the fittest insures the survival of stronger members of a species, but the species in itself is always evolving toward its own demise if you will. I’m not going to get all technical here. Just, bottom line, even by the laws of Darwin’s “upward evolution” what this lady is saying is crazy. Darwin’s theories say that animals evolve slowly over thousands of years. This lady is saying that 2 feet in height were gained in two generations. Get a clue. She also talked about Japanese men and women. She said “remember a while back we talked about Japanese people as short, and now the average height of Japanese people is like 5′6”? That’s proof that evolution is needed to cope with the environment that must in some way require people to be taller.” Congratulations, you’re an idiot. Ok, I was waiting for it. Just ask, “Well then why ARE we taller?” I guess no one knows for sure, but I think the best answer can be summed up in a single word: nutrition. My grandfather would cut the fat off of steaks, put it on a plate, add sat, and eat ONLY the fat. It wasn’t that long ago that people simply didn’t know certain things were bad for you. That, coupled with the incredible advances in food production and heath research that’s been done make for a much healthier person. That’s why people are living longer these days. That’s why some people are getting stronger, and that’s why we, as a whole, are getting healthier. “Hey wait, look at America, we eat fast food! That’s unhealthy!” Well, yeah, a little, but compare it to 40 years ago when people would eat a half a pound of animal fat in one sitting and think nothing of it? As far as people being overweight these days (I heard a new statistic that says 40% of children now are overweight, an amazing number when compared to about 5% thirty years ago) that’s something a little different. “Wait a minute, people eat healthier food and get fatter?” you may ask. Exactly! Here’s the thing. Today, a kid eats a turkey sandwich. Thirty years ago, a kid would have eaten a hunk of animal fat… THEN run around outside playing for several hours, instead of playing a video game or watching TV. It’s simple logic people. If you don’t “push out” what you “push in”, it’s stored in the body.

Enough of this. I hate trying to defend myself. It’s pointless, I know I’m right ^_^ Anyway, I met a really nice girl a few days at school. Yeah, then I proceeded to screw it up. I was sitting up the stars of building five just outside of the library doors. There are some chairs there and it’s a nice place to sit and study because there’s a TV in viewing distance, a table to put my stuff on, and it’s easy to listen to the radio (talk-news) as I work. I also get to eye all the people who go up and down the stairs. Some of the things I see are really funny. Anyway, this girl walks up the stairs and goes into the library. I couldn’t tell that she was Asian (I only saw her back) but I noticed her solid green shirt that lightly folded over her and long jeans and thought to myself (no lie) “wow, isn’t it amazing how few people out there actually try not to look slutty.” Glancing back to Laura’s picture she drew for me of Kanya (^_^) that was my request… “modest clothing”. I think there’s a huge thing to be said for that. Seriously! Ok, for you girls who read this I want to give you a little tip. Everyone’s different, I know, but I’ll speak from my point of view here. If you’re single and want to attract a guy, think about the type of guy you’re going to attract by what you wear! If you wear skimpy clothes that go half way down your butt and three quarters of the way down your chest, what kind of guys do you think you’re going to be attracting? I’m not saying to go to the other extreme (wear sundresses every day) but some guys (who might actually be really good guys) wouldn’t even consider a girl who dresses that way. I’m rambling tonight, I know, but I’d like to at least get this across. A girl who dresses half naked attracts shallow people, and a girl who dresses half naked is likewise thought of as shallow. If you’re a girl dressing like that, you’ll attract shallow people and repel ones who are actually interested in YOU instead of just your body. These days it’s so easy to fall into wearing what other people wear without actually thinking about what you’re doing. I tried not to ramble, but I failed. Oh well, in short, I think there’s a lot to be said about pretty women who dress appropriately.

Ok, back to where I was…. Where was I? Hh great, now it’s going to sound like I ‘like’ this person. Ehh, I don’t, so I’m not going to bother worrying about what you might think. Anyway, thirty seconds later she came back out of the library… walked toward me… looked around… and went in the hall on my left. “She must be lost”, I thought to myself, “Nothing’s down that hall but offices.” Just as I guessed, a minute later, she came back out… But then something unexpected happened. You know how bad I am when things catch me off guard. She was walking towards me (I was between her and the stairs) so I knew she’d go to the stairs. I glanced at her, she smiled, I returned a weak smile and returned to my math as I tried to figure out where she was from. If I had to guess I’d say she was Thai but she could have been Filipino, I’m not sure. She had slightly darker skin than central or east-Asian people and that coupled with her very unique eye shape made me realize that she had to have ethnic roots from the southern tropical islands around southeastern Asia and- “noh era aba rewm snare?” I popped the ear bud headphone out of m right ear by pulling at the string and looked up in horror. The startle almost made me jump when I saw her standing in front of my table; I thought she was going to the stairs?! “I-I’m sorry?” I half mumbled, half asked. “Do you know where the bathrooms are? Everyone here is giving me bad directions.” She said then smiled softly. Bathrooms… let’s see… oh yes! I go to the bathrooms a lot in this building since I’m here for so many hours. I felt my eyes drift from the upper-right of my vision back toward her face. “There’s one down these stairs…”, I said as I pointed with what must have been incredibly silly looking hand signals, “… then to the …”, was it left or right? Well if you’re walking down the stairs it’s one way, but if you’re in the building it’s the other, so do I say left or right? I paused… “uhh… that way!” I said in a tone that much resembled a young child exclaiming where the playground is as I pointed to the East. “Oh, that way? Thank you so much!”, she said, “I guess I should ask more people like you with backpacks, some people here don’t know what they’re talking about.” I chuckled a small but noticeably forced laugh… she started to back away so I said “Have a good one!” Funny, she didn’t reply. Why didn’t she reply? I told her to have a good day. No, no I didn’t… I told her to have a good one. She asked where the bathroom is… oh jeez. I just told her to have a good one… she doesn’t actually think I meant “have a good crap”, does she… oh well, it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll see her around sometime? She must be starting in the fall. That’s funny she couldn’t find the bathroom, it’s down the stairs to the left… I go there a lot… and… oh no… crap! That’s a men’s-only restroom. Where’s the women’s restroom?! I think it’s on the other side of the building. Oh great, she was just saying about how people don’t give good directions and don’t know what they’re talking about. Go add Scott (the hot one) to the list so you can just go ahead and scratch it out. Pfft, I’m hopeless.

Ok, now I have a serious question here. Last semester I was in a night-class for macroeconomics. I was both amazed and horrified at the stupidity of some of these people who were going to school to become accountants. I don’t want to sound bad, but these people are just… some of them are amazing. I think the bubble in their head was only matched by the one in their colon. Ok, enough gas jokes. Anyway, I seriously want to know what happens to really stupid people who barely make it through school by taking 2 classes per semester to eventually become accountants. Do you want people who can’t multiple fractions to handle your money? All right, that’s the first part of the serious question. The second part is… in my night class for general psychology, there are a lot of students who are going into pharmacy as their career… Excuse me, having an air head handling my money is scary enough, but do you want you be having one selecting and giving you drugs that could possibly kill you? Seriously, I’m scared to death now. As far as these people go, it’s absolutely amazing to hear the stuff that comes out of their mouths. One poor girl has a child and is asking my whacko psychology teacher how to parent her son. He’s a 5 now. “When’s a good time to start to discipline him?”, she asks, “he’s been hitting me a lot lately.” I just… I need to stop talking about this.

So last night I was physically tired but mentally awake. I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to watch a movie. I pulled out my #1 absolutely favorite movie: “Lovers’ Concerto”. Yes, “My Sassy Girl” has just been offset to #2. Seriously guys, “Lovers Concerto” is a really, really good movie. It’s so good in fact that it’s one (of three) DVDs I actually own! (For those of you who are curious, the other two are “Il Mare” and “Wonderful Days”, all three are Korean, strangely). I’m going to see about being able to upload a clip of the movie for a few days so you guys can see my favorite scene from it. Anyway, the movie is a romantic drama about… I can’t say. The most amazing thing about it is that it starts so light and innocent that given the first half of the movie you could not even believe what happens in the second half. It draws you in unknowingly; that’s why when it starts to hit you, it hits you really hard. The first half of the movie seems to have a completely different story than the second half. I won’t give anything away by mentioning that the first 15 minutes introduce the main characters, a guy and two girls. It’s a very awkward meeting (the kind that makes you cringe as you watch it) but it develops into one of those only-movies-can-do idealistic guy/girl friendships. You know, the friends that become a couple without realizing it? Yeah, it’s an idealistic impossibility in America these days, for many reasons… but it’s still really fun to watch for me, I don’t know why. My it’s one of those things your heart says is so perfect even though your mind says it’s so unrealistic. One of the interesting things about the Korean genre of romantic drama films is the ages of the people in the couples. These people are so awesome (more or less) “really good people” who are in their middle to late twenties and meeting other nice people and dating “innocently”. Think about the movies in America these days. The only people doing the “innocent dating” are very young children portrayed in film. I was vague in my descriptions, but I think you can figure it out pretty easily. Like the respect I hold for simple modesty, I hold a similar respect for simple respect. I’m not going to go on THAT tangent now though. Last night I watched the movie on my DVD player without subtitles. I could have had subtitles, but I left them off on purpose. I’ve seen the movie so many times that I’ve memorized all the lines. I don’t need the subs any more. It’s strange… I’ve seen the movie enough times to memorize all the lines, but it still makes me cry ^_^;

All right, we’re talking about crying here. I think that’s my signal to go. I’ll be honest with you; I have no clue when I’m going to blog again. I hope it’s soon, but hopes wither in reality. So far I’ve left you with over three thousand words; I think that should do for some of you. To everyone who reads my blog, to everyone who sends me mail, to everyone who talks to me in person or online, I thank you for your kindness and support. It’s been nice in the past, and I can certainly appreciate it now. Thanks. You go and have a good one! … A good day that is

ps: check out my new (6 month old) ‘about‘ page