On randomness

The one thing that I break merely by observing...

No, actually, I just wanted to use a quote that once again illustrates how utterly irreverent and arrogant I am, but only to people dorky enough to know what I'm referencing. That includes only one person who reads this blog and he's usually too busy to actually do so, so I'm really just expounding on my own megalomania to myself and the world at large, both of whom are already well aware of the fact.

As predicted (and observed) earlier, I've been oscillating in mood a very great deal the past few days, but with much smaller amplitudes and a much heightened sense of...not resignation, because that has a connotation of defeat about the word. Acceptance, perhaps, or serenity about events that I largely have no control over, and thus am not allowing to bother me as much as I used to. Talking about it, chewing it over and over again in my head and in my blog like a piece of metaphysical cud, however, appears to be helping a great deal, to my benefit and to the detriment of everyone who is reading this. Just how often can we tread over familiar ground before we get tired of the same old scenery? It's like running a marathon in the back yard of a Brooklyn brownstone!

I don't think I'm going to be blogging in a stream-of-consciousness fashion again anytime soon, however. Especially not after reading a book like House of Leaves. The book takes me to cold, dark places, and the stream-of-consciousness takes whatever elegance my writing might have had and cock-slaps it into the gutter. I'm somewhat inclined to go back and delete that last post, but my sense of completion and general honesty won't allow me to do so. And my obsessive-compulsiveness as well, which, for whatever reason, mentally takes on the aspect of a very, very bossy six year-old girl who keeps shoving me in absurd directions from behind and throws major temper tantrums whenever I try to avoid something she absolutely must have me do right now as of yesterday, dammit! So the currently tally goes: my ideal reader is a literate, mustached old British gentleman with glasses and a noncommittal "harrumph," my wit is a whip-wielding dominatrix, and my obsessive-compulsiveness is an annoying little six year-old girl.

And people wonder why I'm a psychological and emotional junkyard. With persona fragments like that, how could I be anything but?

I sort of stopped with the blogging about Wikipedia entries for a short bit (Yeah, I know. That lasted all of a week and a half.) I just don't have the time for it right now, with Musicals Tonight occupying almost all of my free time and P90X occupying the rest. God, I'm turning into a total meat-head. It must be one of the great ironies of modern life that you have to take a social life, a brain, and a fit body and choose two out of the three. I know I didn't stick sleep in there, but that's because you sort of need sleep in order to really be physically fit. As much as that offends my general world view and sense of time management.

I'm also aware of the irony in complaining about not having enough time while sitting here at 3:30 in the morning blogging about almost nothing. I need to go shower, jot down a few story notes, and get to bed. God, I can't believe the cruise is coming up in four days. I can't decide if that will be relaxing or stressful - I guess a lot of it depends on whether or not the cruise sends us the rest of the goddamn tickets for the passengers. Jesus Christ, we've never cut it this close, and I've never come this close to bitch slapping people I've never met. I might just settle for slamming the phone into the table a few times. In the same spot where I was slamming my head last week, preferably.

On dark and spiraling staircases

Feeling odd tonight, peculiar, strange, and a whole host of other synonyms I can't seem to bring forth from the tip of my tongue, and I'm wondering whether or not I could write a successful blog post in a stream of consciousness format without really worrying too much about it. Somehow, I find myself doubtful, since I find myself going back and correcting the odd thing periodically anyway. This anal tendency of mine is going to have to be addressed at some point. I was talking to Jonny tonight about myself, which is hardly unusual, and I made a realization which was less a realization as a decision to speak about something I've known for a while but which I convinced myself was an unknown factor, because there are so many things that lie buried and which should remain buried but for the excavation and digging that alcohol seems to bring. I should seriously just stop drinking. There are no weapons in this world, just shields of varying adequacy. I suppose I could feel clever, since I didn't see that anywhere - yup, I made that one up all on my own, and I'm going to claim it as a favorite quote of mine, since it's a little bit of insight and brilliance that I can call completely my own. Although we do have to ask whether or not anything is our own, in this world where the same archetypes and ideas repeat endlessly under the sun. Is that even accurate, under the sun? Some days I feel like I'm standing at the edge of a precipice, at the edge of that big spiral staircase that goes down past the rim of the earth, and I wonder whether it would necessarily be such a bad thing to fall. Maybe sleeping would be a better term for it. I'm tired, often tired, tired of expending the effort, tired of trying, tired of trying to balance an equation that ultimately has no balance, it seems, and I'm tired of trying to keep up a happy face in the face of that inequality. That's the definition of absurdity, when you look black eternity full in the face and realize that you don't have anything witty left to say. I'm wandering around in the dark, in a dark vast room with arches and hallways as tall as the world and what little light I have can't illuminate the walls. The light is swallowed, consumed by an endless shadow, darkness, teneboration so piercing that a halogen bulb, football lights, the electric power of cities, atomic bombs, the solar heat of fusion couldn't be more than a tiny blip in the vastness of an eternity that stretches on forever and ever and ever and then you discover you're the only thing in the darkness, which isn't strictly true. You stand at the edge of the precipice because you realize that you aren't alone. You can turn back at any time, walk away at any time, except that if you turn around you do realize that someone else something else is in the darkness with you, and that's the real horror - the fact that there is an other when before there was only the perfect solitude, and in fact that's not the true horror at all. The true horror is that if you turn around and walk away from the precipice that would mean facing the other, and realizing that the other is just you. Only you. No more masks, no more smiling faces for other people's benefit, just the core of you that you can't face or identify or discuss because it burns a hole in your gaze. That's why we really don't and can't be alone. That's actually why humans are such social creatures, because when we stand in the dark all by ourselves we have nobody but ourselves to keep us company, and only then do we realize what flawed creatures we actually are. I see a jagged crack splitting my figure from head to toe, and it's not light that spills forth but an oily blackness that seems to stain even the emptiness a hollow shade and I don't know what light can penetrate it. Can you light up the galaxy with such a sad little glow? Is it pain, jealousy, rage, envy, the whole assortment of seven that assembles as they pour out of the cracks, and is identifying them enough to banish them away into some place where the light can wash over them and heal them into something that might be constructive, something that might redeem everything. Redeem. Implacable, sequestered, untouchable, unbreakable, irredeemable, damned. Thinking about that a great deal, and wondering whether or not my pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, and whether I'm actually choosing between a pit and some red-hot walls. Is there a choice there? I think we can see the choice and it doesn't seem to be much at all, except that as Poe indicated even in the darkness of an unfathomable abyss there is hope, always hope, in others? Can yourself be someone else? Can you rescue yourself, stand outside yourself, look into yourself and forgive yourself the errors and thereby heal the tears that wash down from a place too far into the past for nearsighted eyes to see? Who can invest in you the authority to forgive yourself your own crimes and redeem you into the light? Do I even know what I'm talking about, because I think I'm ultimately rambling phrases that sound insightful but ultimately is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That's the thing. Nothing. Sound and fury are ultimately shields as well. There are no weapons. There is no fight, really. There's only a withdraw with as much defense as you can muster before the blank walls of forever push you into a spot that might as well be emptiness, nothingness, vacancy. Against a backdrop of infinity what can you do but dwindle into a point of ultimate meaninglessness? Or is there synergy? Is it synergistic, the action of having one plus one? Simple mathematics combined with considerably more complex motions of the heart (and soul, if such a thing could ever be defined in a way that has any meaning whatsoever) to fill an infinite void with a light that can best be described as empyrean. God exists nowhere but within a human soul, if such a thing exists, and if it doesn't then perhaps God doesn't exist either, and we really have nothing to shield us against that vast and lonely nothingness. Nothing against nothing. It seems apt, in its own way.

I said that I would shine by my own light, but like Lucifer I've been unhappy because I desire things that cannot be. Desire is for what you can't have. The need for what's readily available is just greed. It seems you're destined to be either unhappy or greedy. Covetous. Those aren't quite the same word. Greed doesn't seem to be such a bad thing when compared to an eternity wanting something always out of your reach. I have no stomach for Sisyphean tasks, but the alternative seems, according to C. S. Lewis, to be damnation. What does that even MEAN?

I really need to stop drinking, and to stop reading fucked up love stories that take place in haunted spatial distortions inhabited by eldritch abominations.

On making up for lost time

I know, I managed to miss four entire days of Wikipedia entries. Well, rather than kill myself trying to make up for those entries, I'm just going to hop right back onto the wagon and pretend nothing is amiss. I could sail through my life much more easily if I'd just adhere to that sort of laissez-faire attitude more often.

Anyway, today's entry is Agrippina. Actually, colloquially, Agrippina should've been tomorrow's entry, since it's now one in the morning. However, I'm finding myself unwilling to be caught up on an issue of semantics...and actually, I don't particularly want to blog about today's issue, which was White Deer Hole Creek. I mean...come on. White Deer Hole Creek? Rather than talk about the creek, I probably would've gone into a whole spiel about the sort of man who'd give a creek an asinine name like "White Deer Hole." Yeah, all you perverts out there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know exactly what I'm thinking, and shame. Shame shame shame on you for your filthy, filthy, filthy minds! What would Sister Aloysius say? Think of Grandma! What would she say if she knew what you were thinking? And how dare you think of Grandma with a mind like that?! I bet you have her sunk in all sorts of disgusting, perverse, and unnatural positions now.

Anyway, Agrippina is an opera in three acts, which already puts me into a bit of a "Uh oh" mood, because I know very little about opera. My training, you see, is in acting, and it's actually very, very difficult to behave realistically when you're belting out a high C in Italian. I know this because actors need to be in the moment, whereas singing is actually all about keeping track of your muscles and your breath and making the little adjustments you need for the sound to come out beautifully. Although breath is every bit as important to acting as it is to opera, the latter parts are antithetical to keeping yourself grounded in the moment, to stop paying attention to yourself and to start paying attention to your partner and your surroundings. I have a lot of respect for opera singers, mind you. Theirs is a demanding art that requires a very great deal of technical skill and physical stamina. I just don't tend to have a lot of respect for opera singers as actors. Which is fine, since I fairly sure most of the people who go to the opera aren't there for the acting.

I actually gave some thought to opera, way back in those dawn ages when gods roamed the earth and heroes still existed. In between besting a red dragon and slaying the Lich of Dunwich, I briefly entertained the notion of getting operatic training, since I enjoyed singing a great deal and it seemed to be a nice way to synthesize that with a fondness for the stage. Then a meteor missile hit me in the head, knocked some sense into me, and made me realize that singing eight hours a day wasn't really my idea of a good time. My passion for that was lukewarm at best, and a lukewarm passion is only good for party games and soiling the sheets.

I'm not too sure where or why that last paragraph went in that particular direction. I think hunger is making me delirious. I'm going to sign off and eat some of my shrimp.

On musical selectivity

I have absolutely nothing to say about Motorhead, excepting possibly that I'm enterprising enough about new things to maybe pop over to Youtube and listen to a few of their songs. I will not do that now, however, because I don't particularly want to. This is my blog and I can do what I want! In fact, I could segue away from Motorhead and talk about, oh I don't know, rabid cabbages if it's my wont! Just because I have a pet project doesn't mean I'm locked into it! I refuse to be tied down, not even by myself! Freedom and anarchy! Down with the fascist, controlling, stifling Big Brother and up with the power of the people! For the Swarm!

My musical taste has been sort of an interesting anomaly for me. It's very widely scattered, and I'm very hard pressed to find or define any sort of pattern or regularity in what I like. I used to think that I liked alternative or heavy metal, but recently I'm discovering that I like only certain songs in the alternative or heavy metal genre. Not even certain bands. Certain songs. This holds true for classical, pop, video game music, techno, and pretty much everything that I listen to. I offer some explanation by saying that I have a very, very poor sense of discernment - I have a very hard time discerning lyrics in songs, so I tend more toward the musical aspects as opposed to the lyrical. Nevertheless, that doesn't really explain why I'm more fond of, say, "Dancing Mad" than I am of "Unforgiven," or why I like "Around the World" by ATC but don't like the majority of Backstreet Boys songs. I do notice that I seem to like faster-paced music more than slower ones, but that's speaking very, very generally, because I have no small number of slow love ballads on my iPod. However, I do notice that I really, really love it when people mix modern instruments with orchestras and classical instruments. Electric guitar or synthesizer together with a full choir and a full orchestra? That's amazing! AMAZING! I've yet to come across music made in that fashion without enjoying myself. Similarly, I love the British band "Bond" for their ability to mix synthesizer, electric guitar, with a string quartet. I love almost every piece of Bond music, which is something of a rarity for me.

Anyway, like every other aspect of my life, my musical taste seems to take a "treat everything individually" sort of approach to songs. Bond happens to be the exception that proves the rule, but maybe they'll start sucking and I'll have to be more choosy when it comes to the songs they release.

On pendulum swings

So I went on a date tonight for the first time in...wow, I'd have to say months. I don't think I've really dated anyone since before I left for the cruise back in September. Oh wait, no, that's a lie. I did go on a date with Antyon back in November or December - I can't quite remember exactly when - and that was nice, but the two of us had such radically different personalities and outlooks that I just couldn't see it working out.

Anyway, the guy was nice and we shared a lot of interests, and although I think we'd make decent friends I don't really see us in a relationship. He has what I can only describe as a speedy personality, and I find that I generally get along better with people who are slower than I am most of the time. I do have to say I find that a bit hilarious, because I'd always figured myself fairly laid-back and very low-key. Hanging out with Luis and Rob and most of my other friends, however, has led me to conclude that I'm actually a bubbly, insane maniac when I'm within a certain comfort zone. I think dating someone who's actually faster than I am would end up exhausting me, as I'd feel a perverse need to keep up.

Anyone who's kept up with the blog the last few months will probably know that I've been experiencing something akin to crushing loneliness for a while - insomuch as my Chinese cyborg heart can experience emotions like crushing loneliness or existentialist angst. Actually, it occurs to me that even when I blog about my depression people probably don't know that I am, as I tend to approach topics like that from a very sidelong, oblique angle before slitting their throats with a verbal dagger. Assassinating all forms of emotional expression tends to make it difficult for other people to recognize the signs. Nevertheless, visible or not, this has been the case, and it's only fairly recently that I've found myself pulling out of it. It'd been happening for some weeks now, but I think the process really only became noticeable on Saturday night, when I looked at Dusty and Luis and realized that although I was a teeny bit jealous of what they have (or apparently have), it no longer felt even remotely like someone was taking a corkscrew to my chest. It probably helped that I genuinely like Dusty, but I also think a huge part of it has its basis in an e-mail that Myia wrote me about finding peace within myself before trying to find my balance with another person. Myia always seems to know exactly what I need to hear.

Ayway, what's interesting is that this upswing seemed to hit its stride last night as I was walking home from my date. I realized that even if the date had really gone somewhere...I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted it to go any further. After months of wishing I could share my life with someone, I suddenly discovered that I didn't really have any strong desire to do so anymore. I suddenly felt much more invested in finishing up projects that I'd started, books that I've been meaning to read, shows that I still haven't watched. Talk about fickle, right? Weird that it should happen almost immediately after going out on a date with someone that, on paper, should've been great for me. I'm always reminded here of what an astrology book said about Libras, about how we swing manically around a centerline of balance before finally achieving it. I've been making some pretty huge oscillations lately, and I guess I'm now hitting the opposite end of the scale I've been riding for the past few months.

It's funny, but I actually tossed off a few messages to some people I found interesting on OKCupid when I got home. Why should I do this if I've just decided that I wanted to work on finding my own peace for a while? In some ways, it's the perfect time. I'm arguably at my most emotionally rational, so I'm more likely to judge a person based upon his actual merits and our real chemistry rather than falling prey to any romantic notions I might be entertaining about splicing my soul together with somebody else's. As I said earlier, I'm already far less invested in the notion, so if nothing comes out of it, well, no big deal. Life continues on my own terms, insomuch as it can be on my own terms. Arguably, the most perfect time would be when I've finally hit that balanced center, but I think I have quite a bit of maturing to do before I get there, and relating to other people is necessary for that process.

This comes back to something else I'd been thinking about for a while. For some reason, Rob reading Lucifer has renewed my conviction in certain themes that it explores, at least as far as they pertain to me. Being myself. Finding own my path based upon my own will, and not what anyone else expects or wants of me. Being a star in my own right, rather than waiting for someone else to shed their light upon my nighttime skies. I wrote about it in a very grandiose and very drunk fashion on Saturday night, but I think the healthiest thing for me right now might be a return to focusing on what I can do with my own life rather than concerning myself with what someone else might be able to add to it. I've tried, and tried hard, for a year and a half with mixed success. Being in a relationship has never been far from my mind during that time, but maybe it's time I break the ruby and reclaim my power for a while. Find out if I can really own my positive attributes and accept - truly accept - that I'm the fantastic catch all my friends insist I am.

On obscure universities

I probably ought to be fair in this: the Florida Atlantic University (topic of today's Wikipedia entry of the day) is hardly a small university. It's at least half the size of Virginia Tech - the largest university in Virginia - has no less than six satellite campuses, and was the first public university to open in Florida. I'd just given it no consideration up to this point, which in my egocentric sort of way makes it an obscure little place in Boca that nobody really gives two shakes of a donkey's butt about. I hope I've just offended everyone who has gone, goes, or is planning to go to Florida Atlantic.

Slightly tangentially, as these blogs tend to go, when I was looking for potential theatre schools, I gave some thought to Florida State, which is said to have a pretty terrific theatre program. I can't remember precisely why I chose not to apply - I think it was because the program offered only an MFA in theatre, which would've been a pretty weird thing to shift into coming from engineering like I was. In retrospect, I think I probably should have given them my information anyway and seen what happened. I mean, what's the worst that could have happened? I could've gotten turned down, I suppose, but I got turned down by NCSA and SUNY Purchase, so that hardly would've been traumatizing. As an aside, it was probably a good thing I got turned down from NCSA and SUNY Purchase, 'cause both of those schools were FUCKING expensive. Even if I was, somehow, able to afford four years of acting school at over 40 grand a year, it would have locked me into the profession out of a feeling of sheer investment. I wouldn't even be able to contemplate going back to grad school for something else, like I'm doing now.

Anyway, at least part of the reason I chose not to apply to Florida State was because I figured I had no chance of getting in, but I think it's argument-worthy whether or not that was actually true. I got into AADA, after all. I had a much more self-defeatist attitude before I came to New York, more of this feeling that if there was a good chance I wouldn't succeed, then I shouldn't even try. Lucifer's quote in "Inferno" comes to mind: "Because I might lose? Funny reason for turning down a duel." It derives from being generally successful at things that really mattered to me as I was growing up, and from a self-inflated notion of my own intelligence. I hated it when I failed at anything, hated when I made any mistakes, and as a result I either didn't care about things that I wasn't good at (like sports), or simply didn't undertake them.

It's always interesting when I look back on the person that I was, as compared to the person that I am now. Age and experience will do that to a person, which I guess is a better gift than than just liver spots and severe incontinence. I barely recognize myself from just two years ago, much less five or ten. Going to acting school, working full-time and living completely on my own, and seriously dating people have all left their mark and exacted their toll. I wonder if I could honestly say I'm a better person. Wiser, perhaps, but does wisdom necessarily indicate improvement?

I don't really feel like going into that right now. How the devil did I go from Florida Atlantic University into a discussion of my personal failings? Ha, well, this IS my blog, so it's pretty much inevitable that everything discussed will inevitably circle back around to how it relates to my life. Narcissism is par for the course when you're maintaining an online blog, I think.

(As another aside, which we all know I do dearly adore, I think I'm getting less witty and less funny with my blogs as my days drag on. I blame it on Dead Rising and the late hours I've been staying up trying to keep the motherfucking useless retards scattered around the mall alive long enough to shove them into the "secure" security room, where they can drive each other insane with their incessant whining and demands for attention. Carlito was right - that place is hell, and not because of the zombie infestation.)

On REALLY scenic routes

Huh. I totally forgot to put up a blog yesterday, but it kind of looks like Wikipedia forgot as well, because the last entry there is still describing Utah State Route 128 in all its magnificent glory. Anyway, today's topic is the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, the (somewhat ill-fated) last Antarctic expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

I have to admit that I'm fairly impressed by that title - the Heroic Age. It sounds very epic, almost high fantasy, very much "The Heroic Age of Man," wherein we bested the Beast of Blacksmoore, defeated the great dragon Glauringfang, felled the Fell Hordes of Eventower, and were general badasses overall. Of course, the beasts, dragons, and fell hordes involved in this particular Age were dangerous seas, abominable cold, starvation, disease, and Murphy's Law, but those are arguably more dangerous and harder to overcome than any smoke-belching dragon.

Explorers as a group tend to interest me. I don't think I was born with the gene that gives you a thrill every time you come across some unexplored tract of land or mysterious delve in the forest. I'm pretty mundane when it comes to that sort of thing - I can appreciate them, but, as with most people, the notion of hacking my way through a bug-infested swamp or sub-zero arctic wasteland purely for the sake of piercing that veil of the unknown...doesn't really appeal to me. My tastes for delving into the mysterious tend to be much more academic, I guess - scientific as opposed to geographical. It's all linked, of course - explorers turn out new things for scientists to puzzle over, and scientists then apply that knowledge to expand our horizons of understanding, coming up with ways for explorers to go further and further into that mysterious, misty horizon at the edges of human experience. My spirit of adventure tends to be limited to industrialized countries with running water and internet access, and I note this fact with a certain amount of disappointment in myself. I look at my friends who have been enterprising in their travels, gone to places like Peru or Malaysia, and while part of me thinks that would be a fantastic experience, a part of me also thinks I'd probably get whacked over the head with a big stick, raped, and shoved into a ditch somewhere (not necessarily in that order?) I guess that's true of everyone - the difference is whether you're willing to step outside your comfort zones and take a chance and dive into something new. Then again, I could probably make the same argument for taking a trip to a Pentecostal church in Bible Belt or going to an S&M party in the heart of Chelsea (how's THAT for a broad spectrum), but that would make me deliberately obtuse.

I think...maybe before I start going back to school next year, maybe I'll take the chance to do some traveling. Maybe even some unplanned traveling, like Adam did in Europe. Just buy a ticket to France, buy another ticket back from London maybe two months later, pack a few books and supplies and maps, and see where I end up. I've been making a slow trek from introversion toward extroversion the past couple of years, so talking to new people as I go might not be the horrifying, slimy, slug-like monstrosity that it currently looks like. (AUGH! SLUG BEAST! GIANT SLUG BEAST! WITH WINGS!) Assuming I don't end up in the Hostel of No Return, of course. Apparently, Eastern European people particularly like Asian people for that sort of thing. Man, I should never have watched that damn movie.

I'm making a mental note of this blog, and of the fact that I'm telling myself I might do such a thing. We'll see how I stand with my semi-resolutions come next summer. Maybe I'll talk Luis and Rob into a road trip first.

On scenic routes

Today's Wikipedia entry is about as banal as you can get. Utah State Route 128. Wow. They couldn't have even given me a state route with a little mystique, a little mystery, a little hint of danger or some social standing that I could comment on, like a highway in California or some scenic route in the upper reaches of Oregon. I'd even have accepted Mississippi or Alabama, just for the opportunity to commentate on the combination of old American mystique and prejudices that run thicker than blood along the vein-like roads of the Deep South. But no, it has to be a highway in bloody Utah, which is an entire state that I know almost nothing about, excepting possibly that it's mostly a lot of arid plans and long stretches of very flat desert. Oh, and it has Mormons in it.

I suppose I could go into a discussion of my opinions on Mormons, but truthfully I don't know very much about them either, excepting only this very odd cartoon on Youtube - apparently from the 80's or so - warning people against the Mormons. This particular cartoon, however, painted the Mormon religion in a very...eccentric light. I can't remember a great deal of it, but it claimed that Mormons believe Elohim (a.k.a. God) travels around to inhabited planets, elevates their people to divinity through the Holy Word, and then fathers other deities with said inhabitants of those planets. His children then go to other inhabited planets to continue the cycle. Apparently, the reason that things are so bad here is because Jesus and Lucifer, both children of God, ended up getting into a war over who was to have dominion of Earth and the right to elevate the people of Earth into divinity. This war is apparently still ongoing, and sort of casts the division between God and the Devil as a disagreement over property rights.

Needless to say, I thought that the cartoon either misunderstood or misrepresented the Mormon faith in a pretty spectacular sort of way, but my friend TJ, who was born in Salt Lake City, assured me that Mormons have some pretty far out beliefs, and that the cartoon was't really as satirical as it may have initially appeared. Which sort of made me go, "Oooooooookaaaaayyyy..." I suppose I could just pick up the Book of Mormon and made my own judgments, but reading holy texts tends to make my head hurt. I could convince myself that I'm just reading a piece of mythology, but I know that there are people out there who can and do take the most literal interpretation possible of what I'm reading, and when I read something like Genesis and think about that, it kind of makes me want to lose all faith in human rationality.

Hmmmm...I'm feeling oddly muffle-headed today, like my brain were wrapped tightly in a warm, damp towel and I can't quite bring the force of it to bear. I don't think I got quite enough sleep, and I think I'm actually a teeny big hung over as well, which never does my writing any good. I'm going to call it a day for now and hope that my brain is more limber tomorrow.

On lanterns

Okay, so I took a break from my project for today, primarily because I was rushing around like a headless chicken all through today. Rob and Luis and Dusty and Kevin and Erin and Jason and arrgh so many people were all coming tonight for a big dinner gala thing, and I woke up about two hours after I'd intended to wake up, and so I had to do yoga, do my laundry, go food shopping, get a haircut, and cook a Chinese dish all within a four hour period. It's a testimony to my time management skills in a crunch that I actually managed to get everything done except for the yoga, which I shrug and will do tomorrow after (or perhaps before) I get my tattoo consultation.

Oh, by the way, I'm getting a tattoo. Or at least a consultation, which will be happening tomorrow afternoon. Odds are good that Luis will be asleep both before and after I come back from the consultation. He does that. It's worth mentioning here that I'm disappointed Rob and Dusty chose not to stay. I was looking forward to video games - especially Metroid Handing Rob while he was playing Dead Space - and I was REALLY looking forward to Resident Evil 5 co-op mode. (*SIGH*)

It's also worth mentioning, however, that I had a really terrific time tonight. Amazingly terrific. The sort of night that only happens, can only happen once every few months, if not every year, and which I genuinely wish I could rewind and play over again just so I could do it all over again. We all know what that's like.

I kind of wanted to toss into this blog before I go to bed, however, that in light of my new intention to start dating again, despite the fact that this seems to be a relatively bad time, given the fact that within the next week Musicals Tonight starts up again, after which I'm going to be going to Spain for two weeks...wait, that was a total run-on sentence. I've had three glasses of wine and three glasses of vodka - I'm allowing a certain freedom in grammatical structure for myself when I'm tipsy. The key point I want to express at this point is that...I'm done settling. Done chasing after other people. Done expecting and hoping and waiting for a train that just don't come. I will borrow light from no one. Taking a page from one of the most interesting characters I've read about in a while, I will shine by my own light. I shall be a star, not a moon or planet, and I cast my light upon my own path. There is nothing in mere loneliness or emptiness that will daunt me, and I will not be afraid of anything that may rise from the road to greet me.

I've decided that my fulfillment will not be contingent on anyone's will but my own. Just as my decisions are my own. Just as I am not my hopes, nor my dreams, but only the sum of my own decisions.

I will be absolute, be myself, until I bleed. Regardless of how much that may hurt sometimes.

On the cruelty of the hunt

Today's topic on Wikipedia is hare coursing - admittedly something I know very little about, but which nevertheless I was ready to leap to an opinion on without learning any more about it. See, even diplomatic, intelligent guys like me aren't immune to judgmental nosedives. I was ready to immediately proclaim that hare coursing - like the pack hunting practiced for sport in England until very recently - is immoral and cruel to animals. Upon reading the entry, however, although I'm still rather inclined against the sport, I'm reevaluating certain aspects of my hangups against hunting (in real-time, no less!)

According to Wikipedia, hare coursing now generally uses sight hounds - hounds that rely on sight and speed to catch the hare - as opposed to scent hounds, which (you guessed it!) rely on scent. It also uses a pair of dogs, as opposed to a pack of them. Why is this an interesting distinction? Because it gives the hare a fair chance, so to speak. If the hounds are fast enough and keen enough to catch the hare, then they've caught the hare. If the hare is faster than the hounds, then it runs away, no harm, no foul. This is in contrast to scent hound haring because the pack of hounds inevitably out-lasts the fox, hare, or whatever animal is being chased and tears it to pieces.

The reason I'm slightly less inclined to condemn this form of hare coursing outright is because it doesn't seem overly different from what happens in nature. The hares caught in hare coursing are used for food, not tossed away, and they're given a reasonable head start. If I came across a wild dog in a forest, saw it chase after a hare and then catch it and eat it, I'm certainly not going to condemn that as being particularly cruel. Is this necessarily so different because we have the capacity to pamper our pets and feed them canned dog food? If I owned a large patch of woodland and chose to supplement my dog's diet with rabbits that they caught themselves, is that animal cruelty?

I guess it would be the competitive aspect of the game that makes it so unpalatable. The notion that there are people in the stands, cheering for the dogs to catch the rabbit and tear it to pieces. Somehow, I'd managed to miss that completely - maybe because the whole notion of a crowd cheering for something to kill something else feels so...totally alien to me. For some reason, the fact that there are spectators at this event evaded me. Now that - that fills me with complete distaste. I'm sure some of those people are cheering because they're enamored with this notion of mastery, of their well-bred dogs overtaking the wild. For them, I'm guessing the hunt is symbolic, a metaphor of man, or perhaps civilization, with our well-trained and well-bred animals, revealing its mastery over the natural world. In that fashion, in the way that the dog breeders take pride in their animals, I'm supposing that it's a matter of honor, however much my own notion of honor might rebel against hunting a relatively defenseless rabbit.

But then there are the other people, the ones who are there for the blood and the kill. Those people who watch cockfights or dogfights and find them exciting rather than massively upsetting. I wonder how excited they would be if someone stuck them into a national park and sic'ced a pair of hungry wolves on them, or gave them a board with a rusty nail in it and threw them into an arena.

Yeah, if it's not obvious, I find that pretty abhorrent.

So in conclusion, I wind right back to where I started. Hare coursing? Not so much. Get your kicks somewhere else.

On membrane inflammation

Today's topic is right up my alley. That's right, we're talking about an inflammation of the meninges. Ohhhh yeah! Sexy! Go go meningitis! I think that I ought to start a super sentai team based entirely upon cerebrospinal disorders. Meningitis, inflame! Scoliosis, bend! Encephalitis, swell! Multiple sclerosis, cannibalize! Alzheimer's, forget! And together we form, PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE!

Anyone reading this blog for the first time undoubtedly thinks that I'm a horrible, horrible person. And he's right. He's so, so right.

Actually, there's not a great deal that meningitis prompts me to say. I suppose I could go deeply into what I think are the problems with the American health care system, one of the worst actually being a seemingly complete disregard by the average American for their own fitness and well-being, which is symptomatic of an increasing trend toward diverting responsibility from ourselves and onto whatever convenient scapegoat may be available. Yeah, I'm pretty disgusted at the fact that an ENORMOUS amount of our health care spending is toward disorders and diseases caused by, to put it simply, BAD HEALTH DECISIONS! Smoke a pack a day for twenty years? Guess what - you're probably going to get lung cancer. Eat nothing but MacDonalds food and never exercise? I can pretty much guarantee you're going to end up with a whole slew of heart-related issues. And I find it kind of hard to sympathize when that sort of thing happens. It's like asking me to feel sympathy for someone who, after being told repeatedly that walking over a bed of hot coals is going to get them burned, does it anyway and then complains about third-degree burns on their feet. Just because the burns in this case take place twenty or thirty years later doesn't really make the person any less responsible for their own injuries.

Our health care system definitely has its problems, but so much of the strain on that system comes from a mentality of entitlement, that we can do whatever we want to ourselves and that it's somehow the medical community's responsibility to pick up the pieces when our bodies start rebelling against us. I'm not saying everyone ought to be a complete health and fitness freak, but come on people. It's really not that hard to eat healthier foods, go with the burgers and the fries just once every week or two, and take a brisk walk in the evenings. Doesn't sound like too much, but just that little change in behavioral patterns can reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer by a tremendous amount.

Ugh. Okay, I'm off my soapbox now. This just happens to be a certain point of soreness with me. And I guess I lied - I did have a fair bit to say about meningitis after all.

On serious wtf moments

So I just saw the trailer for "Dragonball: Evolution" and the only thing I can think right is...what the FUCK were they smoking? What brainiac had the brilliant idea to turn one of the longest-running piece of Japanese anime, widely criticized for combining INCREDIBLY slow storytelling with RIDICULOUS action, into a live-action film? And how the FUCK did Justin Chatwin end up as Goku and Emmy freaking Rossum get cast as Bulma?!

The truly sad part is...the movie actually looks quarter-way decent, in a generic special-effects laden not-quite martial arts cheap brainless entertainment sort of way. Kind of like Mortal Kombat, but even more inane.

Words fail me right now. I'm not sure if the notion has jumped through subspace and traversed the entire spectrum of insanity to end up in some weird dimension of the potentially watchable, or whether we're witnessing an epic new chapter in the history of film-making bowel movements. Every portion of me is screaming that it's almost definitely going to be the latter, but the trailer actually looks interesting enough (for a Western-copy-of-Eastern-sort-of-mysticism-but-not-really martial arts action movie) that I'm allowing a tiny smidgen of hope that it might actually end up being the former.

Oh, but I AM grossly offended that they cast Caucasian actors as Goku and Bulma. I mean, really? People, come on. This is RIDICULOUS. There are plenty of decent Asian actors out there, and Justin Chatwin and Emmy Rossum hardly even offer marquee value. Are we really still in a place where we're so afraid of having minorities play the leads that we have to substitute in Caucasian actors in a freaking anime re-make?

I could probably talk more intelligently on this topic, but I'm still a little busy picking my jaw up off the floor. Oh, and I need to go do my P90X exercises. So I think I'll be addressing this a little later, after I've had some time to mull it through.

On really bad art

And not just any bad art - art bad enough that they wrap around the sphere of aesthetic integrity into masterpiece territory, and yet not so bad as to dive right back into the realm of trashy art. The topic for today is the MOBA - the Museum of Bad Art in Boston, Massachusetts - dedicated toward displaying the finest pieces of horrendous muck fished out of refuse piles all over the city. Browsing through the Wikipedia entry, I got a glimpse of a few of them and...let's just say one of the more arresting paintings looks like Andrew Jackson in a blue sun dress and saggy breasts, standing in a field of daisies against a vomit-yellow sky, an otherwise unremarkable blue chair glued to his ass. The title of the painting is "Lucy in a Field of Daisies," but it seriously looks like Andrew Jackson with a unibrow. The painting is so unintentionally hilarious that to intentionally achieve such a feat would take a comic of genius proportions.

I have to admit that I've taken quite a liking to a lot of pieces I saw. Depending on the cost, I would definitely purchase a piece or two of the slightly less gaudy ones and hang them on my living room wall. Or maybe I'd take the slightly more gaudy ones as well. I have a certain fondness for farce, for poking fun at otherwise serious institutions, and in a more serious way, for deconstruction. I don't really want to get into a whole thing about the definition of art, and what "good" art is - that's a dog chasing its own tail when it doesn't even know what to do with it once it's caught it. I do think, however, that there's great value in anything that can bring a little laughter into the world. I am exactly the type of person who would put up the most ridiculous, awful drivel up onto my walls for no other reason than to provoke a response from guests as they arrive. I like thought-provoking, spiritually dense, soaring pieces of art and music and writing well enough, but the notion of introducing a tacky piece of shit after a long train of beautiful works just tickles my fancy to no end. It's like serving jello after a meal of caviar and filet mignon.

My brain isn't functioning quite as well today - I think owing in part to not sleeping well last night - so I'm going to cut myself short, but I think the ultimate point I'd like to make for now is that I'm actually an incredibly tacky person. I have a fairly good sensibility for aesthetics when I want it, but I'm ultimately most drawn to anything with a high cheese-factor. It seems to be the most appropriate response I can find to an absurd universe.