| a pretty safe bet |
[Sep. 19th, 2008|10:31 pm] |
this is what happened four years ago:
we basically ended up with - (GOP + 34EV)
in forty-eight days i think this a conservative estimate of what will happen:
(DEM : 252) / (GOP : 286)
(IA + 7) (IA -7)
(CO + 9) (CO - 9)
(NM + 5) (NM - 5)
(DEM : 273) / (GOP : 265)
i don't doubt that there could possibly be other traditionally GOP states or GOP-leaning swing states that could go for obama (i.e. ohio, indiana, nevada, virginia, north carolina, florida???). of which, if obama gets ohio, historically mccain is sunk. i think all that talk about mccain winning michigan, wisconsin or minneasota is just that, talk. obama won two out of three in the primaries - minneasota & wisconsin, by large margins (yes luis, we remember he didn't win michigan).
nor do i think pennsylvania will swing to the mccain camp. i predict it will shy away from the 'western frontier' image caricature embodied by palin and instead find more congruity with the self-described "scrappy kid from scranton", joe biden.
but iowa, colorado and new mexico are very likely to swing to obama this year. first you have iowa, where obama won the lead-off iowa caucus, compared to mccain who skipped iowa altogether to focus on new hampshire. this left mccain playing catch-up in staff, organizing, grass roots, etc (last poll - Obama +11).
secondly colorado, for many great reasons. despite having some of the most conservative parts of the country (socially conservative - colorado springs & fiscally conservative - greeley), colorado has fairly recently become the 'youngest' state, boasting the highest percentage of young voters in country, who disproportionately support obama. colorado has a popular dem governor & senator, along with an open senate seat up for election this year in which the dem candidate is strongly favored to win, which will hopefully boost turnout. this former red state is looking to go 'all blue' this year (last poll - Obama +10).
last new mexico, like colorado has changing demographics and a lot of the same factors likely to boost turnout: a popular democratic governor and former presidential candidate that strongly supports obama, a popular senator & an open senate seat (last poll - Obama + 8).
basically, to all the people who are freaked by the last two weeks of mccain being on top, don't be. even while mccain enjoyed his post-convention bounce in the nation-wide polls, the polls in these three states were largely unchanged. our system is that weird, quirky electoral college afterall. and whether it's that awesome outcome in 1960 or that awful outcome in 2000, the electoral college will sometimes tip the election to the popular vote runner-up...
but that's not going to happen this time! just keep an eye on that electoral college calculus is all...
also, there's only 48 days left and the economic woes we've seen this week have definitely shifted the message away from oil drilling & foreign policy to economics and have swung support back to obama. pending some sort of 'october surprise', i assume it's too late in the game to change too much from here on.
afterall this is an election where we've already seen two natural disasters (gustav & ike), russia invade another country and the financial collapse of wall street. what else could happen???
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| how i learned to stop worrying and love room mate drama |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|05:20 pm] |
several room mates of mine, both past and present, are moving on to self-perceived greener pastures: new apartments, new roommates of their own and even new cities; i am genuinely excited and happy for them and i look forward to warming a house or two in the near future.
when a roomate comes or goes, there's certainly a sentiment of uncertainty in the air. and the specter of the big selfish question that looms over me will always be - "how is this going to affect me?" it's something you can't help ask yourself, for as perceiveably independent as i am, i am not. i am interdependent.
and as much as that interdependence safeguards my interests, there are always more powerful interests at play that will cause a roomate to "buy out" so to speak and cash in their chips. so far, in the last 8 months i've lived at this house, i've endured roomates leaving because of:
-room mate has child
-room mate couple breaking up
-room mate and outisde g/f (who happens to be future roomate) breaking up
-room mate fed up with miami*
*(sasha hasn't left yet, but that's the scaled-down version of why he's leaving)
so that's four room mate switches in less than a year! four, which is coincedentally the same number of people that live in our house. so we've essentially emptied the house and re-populated it (not really) in the last year.
when i first moved into this house, i was told that the room i was occupying was a 'revolving door', that the person staying there is always the first to move out, yada yada, etc. so i find it quite amazing that i have outlasted certain long-entrenched incumbent members of this house.
however, i want to make it clear that i don't relish the fact that i've been able to stay put while my other former roomates have experienced trails and tribulations. what i do relish is that for the first time in 4 years, i will be living in the same place for a second consecutive year!
my housing situation in the past has been tumultuous and tenuous to say the least:
The Roads (may 2004 - april 2005)
Ber-blanc-me-salgue House (may 2005 - april 2006)
Folk's House (may 2006 - june 2007)
"Current House" (july 2007 - present!)
there is nothing i hate more than moving and i've done enough of it to last me a good long while! (and though i'm scared to declare it out of fear that unexpectedly our landlord will not renew our lease) i'm very happy to say that for another year, i have a place to stay!! (and thus saving me the $1000+ of having to find a new place)
sure, you might look at our house and exclaim (sometimes quite accurately) - "what a dump!" but it's MY dump at least and although it sounds rather strange to say, i think i've had a certain "communion" with this house and that's why "it" hasn't kicked me out yet.
of course that's not to say skye, mike, jose and sasha don't/or didn't have the same communion and thus the house was out to get them. that's preposterous and all in all the house didn't do it to them. the house can't do anything. it's inanimate. but i always seem to bond somewhat with the place that i live. maybe because i'm a home-body or something, i dunno.
but here's hoping this blog post doesn't come back to bite me in the ass in may!
and congratulations to all roomies, past and present for your continued endeavours. |
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| the third heart |
[Oct. 4th, 2007|01:38 am] |
do you know that people have not one, but three hearts? metaphorical of course, but very simple. the first heart is the one you show to everyone. the second you show only to your family and close friends. and the third is the one you share only with yourself.
but anyway, keeping that in mind, it's a new month. i have a new roomate. well, not exactly 'new' but new to this house at least. one, jose a. cosme iii, is moving into our humble home after a much contested debate over whom should fill the vacancy. in this case, it was very hard to end cloture. there were competing interests involved (not obvious ones) and i myself had reasons, that i kept to myself, in my third heart; because i didn't feel the debate should be framed through the prism of these thirdheart- reasons. but nonetheless, the person who should've got the room, indeed got the room. the person whom was in need (not that i don't miss having to wake ryan up at 7am because he parked behind me).
having to choose between two friends is hard though. incidentally, either path would've resulted in regrouping 3 out of 4 roomates from 2nd house (this is the 3rd roomate house i've lived at, so it's just easier refering to them as 1st, 2nd, 3rd). this was hardly intentional. we seem to have acted as parasites who switched from one host to another. but, i suppose the coincedence is attributed to the lack of other people with similar revolving-door roomates. seems like there's a line almost. but skye moving out and jose moving in, also means i beat history. because the last 3 people to move in/out of this house have all been 1) the newest roomate and 2) the person staying in the room i'm in now. it's the typical "last hired, first fired" rule and i beat the revolving door! though i miss skye though. her language was always pepperred with colourful little sayings and her baby boy was an angel.
the revolving door mantle is now hereby passed down to jose and i'll damnright bet an exorbitant amount (see, i didn't write an actual amount in case i'm wrong, then i can bill clinton my way out of it) that he'll be the next to move out. these are interesting times nonetheless. i'm quite fed up with people who seem stuck in cycles, unwilling to break out. maybe being a maverick works in that mindset. people stuck in groups move in cycles, only the maverick has enough perspective to be able to move forward.
this article i read recently said a third of americans weren't born in a time where a 'bush' or a 'clinton' wasn't in the whitehouse (elder bush was vp from 1980-1988 when he became president, then you know the rest). that's 27 years so far, with a guarantee of at least 28 years. that means a third of americans view politics (at least presidential politics) through a bush-clinton prism. i feel like it means that people assume bush= typical republican, clinton= typical democrat. but i think that assumption is wrong on both counts and that as a result people get a very myopic view of politics. |
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| mt. ordeal |
[Aug. 7th, 2007|02:17 pm] |
i feel so overwhelmed by everything since i've gotten back. my week feels like an instructional video for elementary chaos theory, in which everything that could go wrong, will go wrong.
a check from fiu which was supposed to get here a week before i got back is still sitting somewhere in the bureaucracy of private education that is fiu
my paycheck from work was forwarded to my parent's new home in atlanta because my dad and i have the same name
my car, which was not turned on for over 10 days, it's battery went dead and though i was managing by jump starting it off a portable battery i have, it finally went completely dead last thursday.
i missed one assignment in my florida politics class, of which there were only 3 assignments so i'm doomed to fail the class. the first class i've ever failed in my 17 years of being in school thus far.
i had to borrow money from my roomate to make rent and still have enough money to last me until i get paid. which should be tomorrow, until then i'm barely scrapping by. spending most of my money on gas to get me where i need to go so i can continue.
on top of it all, i'm sick. i've been surrounded by sick people since i got back, my co-workers or my mom. i'm probably more susceptible to illness due to all this stress i've been under. the stress hormone making my white blood cells retreat into my bone marrow and all. coupled with the fact that i've been eating quite sparingly.
i was sent home from work today, not that i particularly mind but i want to rack up some hours so i can finally get back on good financial standing before the end of the month.
fortunately i have had some good luck also.
my dad decided to simply keep my paycheck and have my mom write me a check for the same amount.
i was able to sign up for direct deposit through fiu so i don't have to wait for it to come in the mail, with our horribly insensitive mailman only delivering mail arbitrarily.
the day my battery died, almost without thinking, i took a bus to my mom's where she lent me the money for a new battery and it works right spiffy, though i need to hook up the little holster otherwise the battery will get knocked around and won't last very long. but thankfully, i have 3 year warranty on it.
the forgiveness policy at fiu is pretty slack and i just have to take the class over again and though i have to come clean with my old man about what happened, he's luckily a whole state away and can't kill me yet.
i also have a very understanding roomate who lent me the money. and i guess if there's one thing that i've learned from all this is that it's ok to ask for help every now and then, even if it's not from family. i've always championed the thought that no one does anything great by themselves, but i rarely practice what i preach or show this kind of weakness to others.
i'm simply afraid that any sort of dependence might be interpreted as less than honorable behaviour and put strain on friendships. but i suppose when this is all over, the only thing that will have chipped away are the walls i put myself.
despite not being able to help myself, i am rather proud because i certainly could have made it much worse for myself by trying to retreat and ignore these problems. instead, i went with my gut and cut out the "thinking" which is unanimously agreed upon that i do too much. but i can't help it.
i do have one more problem. i have a friend who is stuck in an endless loop. and by waiting for them to break out of it, i too am stuck in an endless loop. and perhaps there might even be other people waiting for me to break out of it who are stuck on endless loops also.
it's too exhausting to remain in this loop but i don't know if i have the courage to give up and break out of my own loop. i suppose i had my chance...
i just don't want to wake up sometime next year and still be in the same place. |
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| 4 for 4 |
[Jul. 14th, 2007|03:23 am] |
i've just moved for the fourth time in four years (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007; yup that's four years alright!). it's pretty nerve-racking. but at the same time i feel as though this is just a by-product of my usual mindset which hates routine. everything in my life has always been temporary. temporary jobs. temporary friends whom i get close to and then move on from & come back to later. temporary love interests that don't challenge me the way i want and eventually move on from too. even school feels temporary since no class is longer than 12 weeks.
i'm starting to see the drawbacks of what comes from the 'temp-only' mindset...
don't get me wrong, these last four years have undoubtably been the best of my life. the collection of people, events and ideas are invaluable to me and have helped me take a few big leaps forward to understanding this thing called the universe. and life. the human being. invisible guiding hands and intangible supranational mechanisms. love. fear (fear is the opposite of love, not hate). etc. and etc. oh and i can't forget about etcetera too.
but that understanding also comes with a sense of detachment and distance, which is needed to achieve objectivity i suppose...
and so, i also suppose it is more important to live life than it is to understand it. and perhaps in attempting to understand i cast too wide of a social net. looking for the big fish. the big pay off. the big answer. the big anything. while many, many valuable things simply sifted through.
when i was much younger i dabbled in the pure sciences. i wondered what made things work. what was the secret in the electrical energy that made objects springs to life. and so i attepmted to take them apart, rather unsuccessfully i might add, much to the chagrin of my father who often had to swoop in and correct my haphazard machinations.
as i grew a bit older my attention turned towards the mystery of social energy (wealth) and then finally to public institutions and their struggle with actors outside the public domain to attempt to control the ebb and flow of social energy.
so knowing my 'temp-only' mindset what will come next? how do u stop climbing a mountain when your view of what it overlooks gets more and more breath-taking with each step? i fear i'm close to hitting a ceiling on the physical realm and i loathe it's abstract 'meta' counterpart. so i suppose it's time to start climbing downward and see what ironically can't be seen by seeing the big picture.
i would say a majority of the world's problems stem from solutions being forced from the top down, when they really need to bubble up from the bottom |
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| nitty gritty tai-pan |
[Jul. 4th, 2007|12:23 am] |
much like in politics, i like grit in life. the 'who gets what' and how. the maneuvering. the bargaining. the leverage. the gamble. the failure. the cursing. the success!
my best friends are those whom i can call'em a jerk to their face and they burst into laughter. |
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| old chums |
[Jun. 29th, 2007|12:43 am] |
OKcomputerSAN (12:34:47 AM): i'll go visit, it'll probably be cheap Culum NH (12:35:11 AM): it's about an hour away from charleston Culum NH (12:35:15 AM): more than welcome OKcomputerSAN (12:35:10 AM): we'll go to a bar pick up some american women, we'll have fake hispanic accents Culum NH (12:35:20 AM): you might fall in love my boy Culum NH (12:35:26 AM): lol OKcomputerSAN (12:35:28 AM): nothing but net OKcomputerSAN (12:35:58 AM): well, i like mountains and it's pretty close to appalachia Culum NH (12:36:30 AM): I have a love interest up there anyway Culum NH (12:36:40 AM): nothing official though so we gotta get those american girls early Culum NH (12:37:14 AM): We'll do the Antonio Banderas accent Culum NH (12:37:16 AM): chics love that OKcomputerSAN (12:39:05 AM): haha, for sure OKcomputerSAN (12:39:22 AM): whatever works for u dude, ain't never been to wv Culum NH (12:40:04 AM): It's a good place man Culum NH (12:40:14 AM): just a small trip to major places Culum NH (12:40:21 AM): i think it's like 5 hours from NY OKcomputerSAN (12:40:19 AM): pretty close to dc Culum NH (12:40:49 AM): I'm just waitin for cali Culum NH (12:40:56 AM): I'm not doing well enough for that place just yet OKcomputerSAN (12:41:20 AM): whatever dude, i'll come up when i have a wad of cash and we'll cause trouble from dc to nyc OKcomputerSAN (12:41:29 AM): and then next year in cali Culum NH (12:41:44 AM): haha sounds like a plan Culum NH (12:41:54 AM): I know a hot personal trainer in cali Culum NH (12:41:58 AM): I'm sure she has friends Culum NH (12:42:09 AM): she's got friggin DVD's and everything |
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| dagnabit... |
[Jun. 20th, 2007|12:39 pm] |
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what a sour way to end a fun night at shooters,
well into 1am, quite sloshed as is my custom on tuesday nights. i took my piercing off for a split second and when i went to put it back on the ball bearing dropped out of my hand and skipped its way into a new life on the floor amongst dust and beer droplets.
i blindly skimmed my hands through the contours of the surface of the floor, having the casual passerby tell me it was hopeless. there was this one random dude who was particularly over-zealous in helping me look and i appreciated it (i think i might've worked with him somewhere in the blur of my 30+ temp assignments, but who can remember...)
but voila! i spotted something shiny which most assuredly was stainless steel ball bearing. i clasped it tightly between my thumb and index finger, rolling it to confirm it was a ball. it was not! it was actually a tiny shard of glass and i cut my thumb because of it.
when i stood up, i realized i had missed saying goodbye to most of my friends. and the only ones still there were wallowing in a self-indulgent hatred of men and all the post-modern feminism in the world couldn't snap them out of it. so i grabbed a handfull of cocktail napkins and clamped down on my hand.
driving home with my thumb elevated, i couldn't help but laugh a little and be remind of neil cassidy in 'on the road' who also cut his thumb and constantly had it elevated saying "dig it".
my parents are leaving sunday. next sunday i'll be starting the process of moving my shit to my new home and a month from now i'll be in a foreign country in the first vacation i've had in two years. time is zooming by and i'm looking over old possibilities that have been on the back burner for a year or longer.
if they don't materialize this time i'll just throw out those old stale possibilities and finally move on. it's 'last chance saloon' if i might borrow the phrase from a friend. i'm tired of coming to the realization that i've spent another year of my life trying to accomplish something that is unviable.
oh well, now i guess i'll buy a spiffy new eyebrow ring
*^_^ |
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| early father's day |
[Jun. 7th, 2007|11:06 pm] |
my dad is leaving saturday for atlanta and he said he's not coming back for father's day to my chagrin. they say no man is an island, but i think my father sure comes close. he's pretty self-motivated for everything he needs, wants, etc; so father's day, his b-day and x-mas are really the only times i get to give back to him. mind you with small, material trinkets but it's still giving nonetheless. i certainly trip over myself rushing to help him in anyway i can at home. even if it's small things. i bring him coffee. i come back ten minutes later and take back his coffee cup.
my dad tore a muscle in his arm about 2-3 months ago while at work. so i try to offer to do as much heavy lifting for him as i can, even though i'm sure it emmasculates him a bit. parents are hard to figure out. i realized the other day that you spend most of your teen years trying to get your folks off your back and accept you, yet the tables rarely turn. i wonder sometimes if i've made the same effort to accept them as they have with me. i suppose it's harder for us, because even though teen angst must be rough on the 'rents, the teenager (hopefully) eventually outgrows the narcissism and becomes more well-adjusted while parents are arguably stuck in their ways.
my mother is more mother than woman. my father is uncurious about a lot of things that fascinate me. and they're both somewhat racist! yet, i think i can accept them for who they are and stop trying to narrow the generation gap. i can stop trying to change their minds about certain things and just enjoy them while i have them.
haha, but they're have been a few glipses of hope in this year that i've lived with them. check it. my dad had some crazy foot fungus since he was 15, that's over 35 years! when i moved back in, i saw it and told him i had a sure-fire 100% guaranteed way of getting rid of it and it wouldn't cost him a cent. but i warned him it was a bit unorthodox. he decided to hear me out and i told him he had to pee on his feet. the ammonia or whatever in urine kills the fungi. and damned if he wasn't surprised when it worked like a charm!
there are some other things too. i've certainly noticed that both my parents have somewhat changed their opinions on same-sex marriage and environmentalism. i watched 'an inconvenient truth' with my dad and i actually caught him watching again by himself! but anyway, we're going to have a small father's day for him tomorrow before he leaves. sigh...parents.
freedom's just another word for nothing left to loose... |
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| it's raining ash... |
[May. 9th, 2007|01:44 am] |
there was a fire somewhere today. i don't know where but when i walked out of work today (on 82nd ave and nw 25th st) there was very thick smoke. and there was even smoke when i got to my house which is considerably far far away from my job. on a more omnious note though, when i got home and opened my window as i usually do, i realized something. it was raining ash...
i don't particularly care for the symbolism. it reminds me of 'chindler's list' and i can't help but shake the feeling that it's an omen. a sign of something. opportunity lost. something that should've happened that didn't. destiny uprooted. that kind of deal. but it's just a feeling afterall. i mean how much could things change in just one day??? |
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| would i rather be working or bleeding? the answer may surpise! |
[Apr. 20th, 2007|08:32 pm] |
so a few hours into work today a duo of blood-mobiles pulled up to the front of the office. since most of the businesses surrounding us are also medical-related a lot of people were easily coerced into donating blood.
i fancied going myself, but i wasn't sure considering the rough week i've had, i didn't want anything to fatigue me tonight for i was surely going to go out and stay out. however, despite initially not wanting to go for those reasons, a mid-day fatigue crept it's way up my back, over my head, pushing my eyelids down. so i figured i could at least go lie down in the blood-mobile and eat snacks.
so i went. no big deal. i've donated blood before, lots of times. i sat there for a long time, texting ppl, chilling. when the blood-mobile staff said i had 'beautiful veins', great iron count, etc. i was apparently the healthiest person they'd seen all day and thus they wanted to do something special to me. that's when they robbed me of my plasma.
i'm not really sure what plasma is. but the way they did it was they hooked me up to some crazy blood-sucking machine. warm red blood went in, it got processed. then some yellowish fluid was pumped back into me. i was told they just wanted my red blood cells and were putting back my white ones. what a jip! also, when my white blood cells were returned to me intravenously (come on, how often do you get to use that word) they were much colder than 98.6 degrees.
quite frankly, it felt like i had ice-water in my veins! it was really unpleasant. i realize now that the whole situation was karma for having laughed at luis in highschool when he was doing the samething and shivering his ass off. i was there a total of two and a half hours. when i finally got out i sat outside in the sun for a longwhile. i was feeling quite odd. much moreso than the previous times in which i've donated blood.
i'm lucky my boss was sympathetic and not upset that i was gone for like three hours. when i came inside he asked me if i felt ok enough to attend a meeting in his office. i said sure, but honestly i couldn't concentrate on a damn thing he said, i was swimming in a consciousness inside my own head, dominated by white blood cells. when i was finally left to my own devices, people hovered by every now and then asking me how i was feeling because apparently other people who had donated blood or plasma weren't feeling well.
i had barely done anything today and it was already 3. the next two hours went by super slow and i strangely thought about how quickly time went by when i was lying in the blood-mobile bleeding... |
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| dear journal, |
[Apr. 18th, 2007|12:09 am] |
i've contemplated deleting you a lot these days. but you have almost 5 years of my life recorded, which serves as very useful analyses of how i used to think these last couple years. how i've grown. how i've changed the way i thought. jeez, sometimes reading my old entries make me cringe somewhat (don't start reading the old ones! stay out of 2002-2003 particularly).
although my blog on myspace arguably reaches more people (i even got a myspace message from tom that my blog is #654687984684684168 millionth or something like that in popularity!), there's something to be said about the emotional distance livejournal offers. much less people have livejournal these days so i can write about my experiences with a large majority of people without fear of reprisal or even acknowledgement.
love. disappointement. they mean virtually the same thing to me. idealism. reality. are apt analogies.
still, there's always someone on my periphery. barely on the radar. whom i always wonder about. whether it's idealism gone awry, or the key to everything. but the latter is also too idealistic to offer as an alternative.
i just want school to be over....
i can't believe how stressed out this semester has gotten me and how it's affecting everything i do.
haha, maybe i'll just stay in costa rica =P
fuck off USA, you probably won't elect barack obama anyway. even though his popularity ratings are the highest of all 2008 contenders.. |
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| :( |
[Apr. 15th, 2007|06:45 pm] |
nat'l availability
ps3 - 94%
wii - 1%...
dammit, what good is fabulous wealth when i can't get a damn wii?
<phone rings>
Juan - Hello?
Jose - Yo, wassup dude?
Juan - I think i'm gonna go buy a wii.
Jose - What? You're gonna go buy some weed?
Juan - No, not weed. A wii.
Jose - Oh, a wii!
Juan - Yeah, i have weed. That's why i want a wii now.
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| do you know there's people out there who are better than you? |
[Mar. 23rd, 2007|04:38 am] |
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i do. it's hard to know how to deal with it sometimes. i mean, do you emulate them in hopes of having the same success? do you resent them for having a innate ability you don't? or do you simply come to accept it? it's hard to know which way to go. i think, as long as you're not crying about it. you're doing ok. |
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| oh yeah! |
[Mar. 11th, 2007|09:03 pm] |
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ft. lauderdale to san jose, costa rica. only $134! i was tremendously relieved. i thought this would be an expensive trip. but i'll hopefully buy my plane ticket this week since it's so cheap. then i have virtually forever until july to raise up spending money. what good fun. |
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| balancing act |
[Mar. 8th, 2007|03:29 pm] |
this is what school feels like most of the time:
 i have to read so much, it's near impossible to read everything. so i kinda cherrypick and the material thankfully overlaps different classes. but it's crazy, i never know how i'm going to do since each proff is a different level of criticalness. so i had this one midterm, american foreign policy. it was one question in which we had to write five pages. the question was:
pretend you are a policy analyst working for the white house in fall of 2002. without using any information after fall of 2002, write a number of policy alternatives regarding iraq (and to some extent the middle east in general) drawing concepts and ideas from the theoretical frameworks of realism, liberalism, neoliberalism and hegemony. conclude with a policy recommendation.
so i wrote my five pages. i didn't give "a number" of alternatives, i gave one big one essentially. and i felt it came out kinda jarbled, drawing from bits and pieces of the different frameworks but not really focusing. i find it hard to write essays in class especially on a time limit like this cuz i kinda do structure on the fly and later have to go back and clean it up. but when i got my test back, i got a 97%! the proff told me it was excellent and very well written.
and it turned out that most people misunderstood the question and ended up writing critiques of the iraq war since 2002. crazy. i hope he didn't curve them. like i hope my good grade wasn't a result of everyone else underperforming. i'd like to think that at this late part of college i have somewhat a mastery of the concepts and am able to write something good even if it's on the fly. this is the first good grade i've gotten on something really important in a long time. so it really did something to validate who i am, as a student at least. not just innate intelligence, but ambition, drive, approach, etc. so i guess for now i'll keep on spinning plates... |
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| i say, you can't keep a buddhist down! |
[Mar. 5th, 2007|04:58 pm] |
the other day while i was at the cosme residence with the cosme bros. and we were checking out the free movies they have on demand. most of them were pretty damn unappealing, but all of sudden 'all dogs go to heaven' just kinda leaped out at us and we watched it for a spell.
i guess i just haven't thought about heaven in quite a while because it suddenly struck me that all the things they advertise about heaven are actually quite dull:
doing whatever you wish
no surprises
no pain, no suffering, nothing bad ever happens
not to advocate pain and suffering or bad things for that matter, but it seems to me that contrast fundamentally shapes perspective. can you know what light is without knowing about darkness?
and the whole 'doing whatever you wish' thing just seems so typical of western materialistic rat-race. the ultimate reward equals instantly getting whatever you want. wouldn't you get bored after a while though, considering you have all eternity, and eventually get bored? it'd be a kind of like a heaven = hell, twightlight zone thing. also, if anything is possible, then is anything truly meaningful?
it just seems to me like heaven is right here on earth. yeah we have huge worldwide problems, but we have the dream, strive, motivation to make meaningful positive changes. as opposed to some spiritual utopia where everything will be the same for all eternity.
also, the human experience is great! it's a unique experience of realizing how many ways you can connect yourself to other things. and when i die, even though i won't remember it, i will move onto another life and experience all those great things again for the first time. i might not even be a human being! i might be a fish or a bird or some annonymous organism on the other side of the universe which our imagination can't even fathom.
screw heaven i say! buddhist reincarnate until they've achieved the ultimate karma and then they can finally move on to buddhist heaven. i wonder what that's like? probably endless adventures. |
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| job tease |
[Feb. 28th, 2007|09:05 pm] |
i was offerred a job at UM today. it sounds pretty cool. i haven't talked money yet, we're still working out the details as to whether my hours are acceptable. they haven't even told me what the job is, only that it lasts till may 13th, which would be ideal since of all the travelling i want to do in june and july. about the only thing i do know about this job is that if they were to hire me after may then as a full-fledged employee of UM i could go to school there for free! UM for free, private school education. maybe even live in the dorm. though i'm not sure i'd want to. but i'd transfer to UM for sure. damn, can't wait to hear the outcome tomorrow. i have a midterm tomorrow morning that's one question. so it's pass/fail pretty much, but my american foreign policy proff gave us a hint that it's supposedly about iraq. so i feel pretty chill about it. hmm, acing a midterm and getting a job. tomorrow has the makings of a great day and i must go out and celebrate should it reach its full potential!
i'm digging 'creative staffing' moreso than any other staffing agency i've been at. i've been told by daniel who applied recently that they "love me" there and that was reaffirmed by my agent, who leaves me messages ending in "love ya!". i don't question why they love me so much, they've certainly shown it in the fantastic jobs they've found for me. i hope i get this! i need to work soon... |
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| easy going adventures! |
[Feb. 28th, 2007|12:27 pm] |
life is very fun and very balanced right now. i've been able to moderate myself and actually stay home some nights and study while my friends are out having fun. i'm very pleased with my social prowess right now and my ability to meet new people. particularly women, even if my encounters with said women are episodic. but hey, my life is episodic in general. my life story might as well have been written by gabriel garcia-marquez.
for the first time in my whole life, i took a test in a class and then displeased with myself for not having read a book for school prior to the exam, i actually sat down and read it. fully knowing that it would serve absolutely no purpose. it's all about discipline.
i have set backs like everyone else. they suck. i mean they really suck. time is more precious than money anyday. but as long as i wake up the next day in my own bed and i still have all my body parts and my super-charged brain between my eyes a friend or two to give me a laugh and my family for moral support. i think i'll be ok.
even if it takes a million years to graduate, i'm going to do it.
even if it takes seven years to get my arrest exspounged, i'm going to do it.
even if i'm 30 before i go to law school, i'm going to do it.
it's not worth it not to and my dreams seem almost impossible if i don't. i want to be a public defendant for a few years, even if it pays lousy, and i'll spend some actual time in the court room. unlike most lawyers who are spineless and settle out of court. i want to make compelling arguments to a jury and make young kids who screw up believe that their lives aren't over. and in my spare time i'll have a private practice as a civil rights lawyer and work endlessly for years if i have to until enough people approach me and say what i'll be waiting my whole life to hear-"why don't you run for congress?" |
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