Thoughts on Earlier Thinking.

When I was a little I thought that every little girl had a twin brother and every little boy had a twin sister and I wouldn't let anyone tell me otherwise. I thought that the '54 Godzilla and the '85 The Return of Godzilla were the only movies worth watching-so they're the only ones that I watched. I refused to cut or brush my hair and on every gift-giving holiday, I would ask my father to get me "a pink pony that flies"(Toys 'R Us made that easy for him). I don't remember my philosophies, I just remember being a little eclectic and very carefree.

When I was in grade school, I read constantly. When I wasn't buried in a book, I was at ballet, or holed up in my room painting. I can't say I was very social. I had a lot of time to myself-so naturally, I started to figure out exactly what I thought. The hardest realization I ever came to was that I didn't believe in God-especially not the God I was told about in Church. I still think that's true.

Now, I think differently. More positively, I guess? Still eclectic-not carefree. I'm still working it all out. It's rocky. I don't really want to look back at earlier thoughts I had and say that they're right or say that they're wrong because I don't know if they are. All I know is that I thought some things that I don't think now and I starting thinking about others and I'm still thinking about them.

A book to read.

Oh, booksbooksbooksbooksbooks. Here are a few that I have enjoyed immensely, and here’s to hoping you give them a try.

The Best American Non-Required Reading-edited by David Eggers

I would recommend this book to anyone, but especially to high-school students. It’s a collection of phenomenal obscure online essays, comic strips, facts, exerts from books, etc. My favorite entry in the book is “Best Woman Comedy Piece Written by a Woman” by Wendy Molyneux. Until you read that, we can’t be friends.

When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Or really anything by David Sedaris. They’re all pretty much the same but they are all HILARIOUS.

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

It’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the existentialist. Read it, it’s bleak and hilarious.

The Trial –Franz Kafka

Old standby. Don’t be disappointed if the plot doesn’t move where you want it to…or move at all. It’s still a great read.

Eating the Dinosaur-Chuck Klosterman

A book where Klosterman interviews many interviews about interviewing. Much more enjoyable than you’d think. He has a fantastic interview with Ira Glass in the beginning of the book.

Art Review

The picture you see above is "Ophelia" by an artist named Charmaine Olivia. She's a self-taught artist in her twenties. Never took an art class, never went to college. This piece is done on wood instead of canvas, in oil paint. Oil paint literally takes days to dry, and this painting has several layers. Not only did it require extreme finesse and control, it took an insane amount of patience and dedication. Her work, which I enjoy, it not always quite everyone's style. Yet it brings to the surface an aspect of art far different from the abstract concept, the whole "what is art?" dilemma: artistic skill and talent. Even if you don't like it, or it says nothing to you, the skill and dedication that it took to create it is un-ignorable. And even though I think that art has the wonderful capacity to instill thoughts and philosophies and emotions into viewers' minds, and that artists have the opportunity and responsibility to take advantage of that, I also believe that skill is skill and should be appreciated.

WE HAVE THE RIGHT

We have the right.

So often the term “right” is given way too much flexibility. Everything is open to interpretation, but there is a huge difference between fulfilling one’s rights and infringing upon other’s rights. Certainly, we have the right to pursue our own happiness, whatever that might mean. But if it takes making someone else unhappy, than it’s not okay. That being said, there are some exceptions to that rule: Freedom of Speech: if you say something that makes someone unhappy, that’s trivial.

I guess that everyone does have the right to say what they want, do what they want, etc. etc. It’s what makes us human. The condition I’d like to add to that, however, is that you have to be considerate of how your actions affect everyone else around you. So…we have the right to pursue happiness…so long as it’s coupled with empathy.

AND OF COURSE

THE RIGHT

TO FIGHT

FOR

THE RIGHT

TO

PAR-

TAY.

Belated Birthday

OBVIOUSLY it isn’t your birthday anymore.

This, however, is an anytime gift: the best links on the internet. And some music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN3OHwU9w6o&feature=related

http://www.blazinglogs.com/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/

http://figment.com/

http://fakeinterviewswithrealcelebrities.blogspot.com/2009/11/happy-road-day.html

http://therumpus.net/2009/09/funny-women-1-the-new-rumpus-humor-column-i-am-sorry-that-i-didnt-write-a-comedy-piece/

http://bieberpuns.tumblr.com/

http://www.rainymood.com/

http://youarelistening.to/chicago

aaaaaannnddddd enjoy.

This means Something.

“I used to be really into the idea of the existential vacuum. Unfortunately, I misunderstood the concept-I bought existential vacuum cleaners. The first vacuum never helped me clean because he refused to tidy a mess that he could never be sure existed in the first place. The second refused to conform to the label society gave him, so instead of owning an existential vacuum, I ended up with a sh**ty lawn mower.”

-Liam Burns

This prompt, of course, brought existentialism to mind. Existentialism is easy to make fun of, as you can see from the above quote, yet it still asks the question that every human being has faced or will face sometime in their lives: “What does it all mean?” I do not refuse the idea that there is some higher power or stronger force beyond our comprehension at work. I do, however, believe that pursuing the answer to what is possibly the most profound and important question will only lead one farther away from it. Think about the question being asked. What does it all mean? It is referring to life-our existence. Think then about our existence-what does life entail? To live is to breathe, to sleep, to eat, to think (constantly and an infinite array of thoughts), to form relationships, to enjoy, to smile, to cry, to laugh, to love or to detest, to become awestruck, to feel helpless or powerful, to regret and to revel, to listen to music, to create and appreciate, to accomplish, to yearn, to be restless or fatigued…

No matter what it means, it is there. One cannot possibly understand why we exist and why we exist the way we do if one is not living. I believe that life means something. I don’t, however, feel that I’ve lived long enough to understand what exactly that meaning may be. I’m certain that someday, someone will belief with absolute conviction what it all means, given that they’ve allowed themselves to breathe, to sleep, to eat, to think, etc.

M.E.X.I.C.O

I guess my favorite song at the moment is M.E.X.I.C.O by The Kills on the Midnight Boom album. Igenerally like The Kills, but personally, I think this song is them at their finest. The Kills are usually good at keeping it short, sweet, and dirty(refering to the electronic drumbeats and guitarist Jamie Hince's pedals); and this minute and a half, heavily distorted song exemplifies that style. Above that, the song showcases both Hince's impressive guitar skills and Mosshart's vocal and ability to make no lyrical sense whatsoever. Only kidding, that's probably just all the heroin she's doing!

Fun Fact 1: Alison Mosshart is also in The Dead Weather, if any of you dig them.

Fun Fact 2: Jamie Hince is British, if any of you dig that.

Chicago's Philosopher King

Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh.....there isn't one. After having written the final and after having thought about the concept a lot, I've come to the conclusion that there never has been, and never will be a philosopher king in America. This is because America is a democracy, and the philosopher king rules contradictory to the idea of a democracy. The democracy is about what the people want, a philosopher king is about what he wants and what his ideal state looks like. Because he's a gd philosopher. That's not to say that some mayors haven't been more like a philosopher king than others, but none of them are actually philosopher kings, because if they were, they'd probably be impeached. That's not to say that our lack of a philosopher king is a bad thing, either. The closest that civilization has ever come to a philosophical regime is a fascist regime. And, well, I think we all know how warmly received fascism has been.

Good Food Review

Amarit Thai

I eat at a lot of Thai restaurants, and I can pretty safely say that Amarit Thai is one of the best I’ve been to thus far.

Food: In the spirit of being a true restaurant critic, I decided to be adventurous and try something new. After a ridiculously drawn out survey of the menu, I decided on Rama Chicken, because I’ve never had it before, or really even heard of it. I was a little apprehensive because I’m pretty predictable with my food orders, and courageously ordering some weird dish you’ve never had before can be a dangerous game when you’re really hungry.

As it turned out, however, Rama Chicken was absolutely amazing. It was served on a bed of broccoli and rice and was covered in spicy peanut sauce and was one of the more delicious things I’ve ever eaten. Amarit gets a thumbs up for cuisine.

Atmosphere: The atmosphere at Amarit wasn’t really all that memorable. It was basically a long, slender, generic diner layout(minus the counter) with a large leafed green plant here and there. They blasted soft rock on the radio, mostly 90’s soft rock(i.e. Sheryl Crow). With the plants, sake menu, and slender crisp white plates(standard Pan-Asian restaurant issue), and Engrish speaking wait staff, Amarit kind of had an authentic feel, but in the way that a squirt of “Realemon” kind of makes your water taste like lemonade.

Service: The service with perfectly good, the waitresses were very attentive and nice and definitely laughed at all of our non-funny jokes. The only downside was that their English really wasn’t that good, which caused a bit of confusion.

Miller’s Pub

Food: The food at Miller’s Pub was alright, but nothing fantastic. I had tiramisu and coffee. The tiramisu wasn’t really anything fantastic, but it was still tiramisu, so I thoroughly enjoyed eating it. The coffee was bottomless, so that was a plus. The menu, however seemed a bit overpriced for the quality of food I received.

Atmosphere: For a place donning the name of an Englishman, the interior of Miller’s Pub seemed to be Italian-American overkill. There was an excess of wood, there were countless top-lit, gold framed oil paintings that seemed to have no common theme except “This is an oil painting”. My favorite, tackiest piece of Miller’s décor, however, is the stained glass in the back of the restaurant, which decided to forsake the traditional Catholic-themed images you expect from stained glass art, and take on a more appropriate image: steaming steak and sausage. All in all, Miller’s Pub made me feel like I had walked out of Chicago and directly into a scene from The Godfather, with just a few unintentionally hilarious twists.

Service: The service at Miller’s Pub wasn’t very good. Our waiter was a little impatient with us, despite the fact that the restaurant wasn’t very full, wasn’t very present or attentive like the wait staff at Amarit. Worst of all, when we made a little joke about his v-necked apron, he got even more impatient and even a little defensive.

Of the two restaurants, Amarit won, hands down.

Winter Poem

I found a way to wrap

seconds to minutes in

softy snowy clock hands, I

I did this by

freezing my watch I left it out in

the snow, I

let it go, now

it moves slow.

I found a way to smiling like

sunshine is pouring in

the room, I

I did this by

turning the heat up and

listening to soul,

it's winter I know, but

But life's too short to waste in the cold.

I am a Shoe.

I'm a shoe.

I'm not the same as when I started out.

Some people think that's a bad sign and some people think it adds character.

Some people don't care what I look like.

Some people care entirely too much.

Some people are extremely comfortable with me.

But some people can't stand being with me for a whole day.

Some people get tired of me very quickly.

And some people will refuse to let me go, even if I'm not doing what they want me to.

I'm always going places: some are big places, some are dirty places, some are slippery places, some are places where everyone can see me, some places are hidden(and you'll forget where I am).

If I've been somewhere I shouldn't have been, then you can see it all over me.

If I'm not given a rest, I'll expire too quickly.

The first time we meet and you like me, I'll be exciting.

But if you're with me everyday, I won't be exciting anymore.

Other shoes will go much more quickly than I will.

Yet some other shoes won't last as long.

But no shoes will last you forever.

I'm a shoe,

I have a tongue.

Sports in my life.

They aren't. I try to pay attention when the Bears are on during a Sunday afternoon. I try to keep my mind on the game and off churros when I go to Comiskey with my family. I've even kept reddening, unblinking eyes glued on the tv when I come across a basketball game on tv. But all I end up thinking is "Jesus, this is boring."



The only sport that was ever fun for me was cross country. I absolutely loved to run. As a dancer, I loved the idea of being physicaly active while not having to play well with team mates. Not that I'm hard headed or difficult to get along with, I just get my head stuck in the clouds and drop the ball, no pun intended. But cross country brought a new fire to my life: competition. I could run a whole race, with my mind wandering wherever I wanted it to, and all I had to do was make sure I could run faster than most of the girls there. I was good at it and it was awesome. BUT then I got a stress fracture which never healed quite right and now whenever I run I get a sharp pain in my left leg. So there that went.



Well, this blog made me sufficiently angry at the sport of cross country.



Boo, sports. Good riddance.

Thankful for a classmate.

I guess the most obvious choices for me would be like friends of mine.

So, Hannah Bernard and Nicole Middleton. They're both pretty swell gals and I'm glad they're around.

But everyone's going to say something like that, so I guess I have to be a little bit more creative like that. Beyond any specifc people, I'm thankful for all of my classmates. That's not to say that all my classmates really contribute to my daily life whatsoever, and not to say that the majority of my classmates are not, in my mind at least, interchangable or replacable. Now you're probably wondering "Am I replacable? Am I interchangable with all the other faces of Whitney Young in her eyes?" The answer is probably. Should you care? Probably not.

My bigger point, I guess is that wether or not I've spoken to some classmates in depth, or wether or not I can remember their names (which isn't a personal thing, I have a short attention span and an even shorter short term memory), they've probably had some effect on me in one way or another. Whether I hear something they say to a friend in the hallway that catches my ear, or dye their hair some impossible color that I swear to God I've never seen before, or they write something in their blog that I've never considered before, it affects me.

I am thankful for the friends I have at Whitney Young. But if I were surrounded by people who agree with me about most things or have the same sense of humor as me or whatever other similarites make friends compatible, I wouldn't have ever grown into who I am, and if it weren't for all my classmates that show and say and write things that are completely foreign to me, I wouldn't continue to grow like I do at this school.

Defend the Promiscuous Alcoholic!

Bukowski liked to drink.

And write poems about his drinking.

Bukowski liked to write poems about his many conquests.

Bukowski liked to write poems about being drunk with his conquests.

Bukowski liked to write poems about nobody believing he'd had so many conquests because he was such a drunk and then drinking with his conquests over it.

Bukowski grew up in the depression, had terrible acne, and was the subject of many beatings.

Bukowski got divorced and was hospitalized and women he loved died and his gravestone read "Don't Try."

Don't get me wrong. I love Bukowski. I have several of his books, many of which I take pleasure in reading and re-reading again. Bukowski is a fantastic poet, undoubtedly. I would defend his work to the ends of the Earth, I love it all that much.

Bukowski's work is fantastic.

Bukowski is also, one messed up, screwed in the brain, depressed, empty, insane individual, who was thrown under the bus so many times he's lost count of all right and wrong or extreme sensitivities to the human condition. While that may be the perfect recipe for a poet, I wouldn't trust the man to hold my sandwich, much less predict the end of the world.

I can defend the poet as a poet, but nothing further than that.

A Direction the Class Needs

North.

Just kidding.

Follow your dreams.

Just kidding.

I think that in general, the class needs to be more focused. Which sounds a little ridiculous, but you know. It's a philosophy class, and voicing our opinions is fun and awesome because we're teenagers or whatever, but since the class is kind of enormous, it feels like we all just shout out what we think and don't really think about what everyone else is saying and don't really get a chance to change our minds about anything. I feel like we should be getting more out of discussions. Which I guess isn't a really good instruction, I guess, because it's a difficult think to do. The very most I think I can say about this is that I think everyone needs to walk into the room with a very strong opinion about whatever we read the night before and be totally convinced that it's truth and it's fact and present the opinion as such, while being completely prepared for walking out of the room with an entirely different opinion gained through the discussion. As new wavey and lame as this sounds I think that the class needs to be focused on learning about human nature through human nature(i.e. through eachother).

Father & Son, Mother & Daughter, Mother & Son, Father & Daughter

Father & Son, Mother & Daughter, Mother & Son, Father & Daughter

Every family has this weird, intricate relationships within itself. Alliances, grudges, dynamics, all this odd stuff. It changes constantly, too. No mother is always happy with her daughter and no son is always mad at his father. With parents, there is a need to be strict and a need to lax. With children, there is a need to be obedient, and a need to rebel.

Parents

In my experience, most parents do really love their children. Even when they ground them, or take away their allowance or whatever else parents do to punish their kids. Parent put punishments in motion with their kids because they feel they need to, in order to help their kids. In life, many things really do come full circle. If you don't do your work at a job, you get fired. In order to teach them that, parents take away privileges like TV time and such so that they understand that when they don't do what their supposed to, bad things happen.

Yet, as I mentioned previously, parents do love their children. Sometimes they have to give in and let the kid do something that maybe they shouldn't or normally wouldn't because they really want to.

Children

As a very young child, you are faced with a huge dilemma: you love your parents, you want to make your parents happy, you want to make them proud by obeying their rules. But at the same time, you also really want to paint the dog. As you grow older, you learn this sort of give and take when obeying and disobeying. You tend to find ways to at the very least give the illusion that you're obeying them at all times, keeping on good terms with your parents while still being able to explore yourself as a person as much as you possibly can.

However, parents were (surprisingly) children once, too. They had the same method of obeying/disobeying as their children do and they know it. It's like a series of unspoken rules. A mother understands that her son might sneak into rated R movies, or a father might understand that his daughter copies her math homework from time to time. But as long they don't see the disobeying to be truly harmful to their children, they can look the other way.

How Do I Know What I Know?

Popsicle sticks and trivia on the back of breakfast cereal boxes.

...no, but seriously, that's how I know what I know. I also know what I know from school, from television, from books, and so on. I know what I know from what I've seen, and what people have told me. I know things because I learned them. I don't subscribe to the idea or notion that we might just know things, that knowledge can just be, and is internal. With the exception of biological survival instincts, of course. I know I need to sleep and I know I need to eat because there's a little switch in my brain that says, "HEY. DO THIS. DOOOOO THIS." But everything else is a product of my environment. I'm not under any sort of illusion that I was born to be this, or born to be that. I know that I am the way I am and know what I know because I saw it somewhere or someone told me about it or I was exposed to it in one way or another. Anything that stuck with me longer or better than the others is just a matter of opinion. An opinion which differs from personality to personality. Personalities which we learn to keep through interactions at young ages.

So, yeah. I know what I know because I learned it.

Our Meaning.

"Our Meaning".

I'm going to go ahead and take the liberty of interpreting "our meaning" as "why are we here"/"what is our purpose". I assume that's what you meant, anyway.

Having had established the question, here's the answer: I don't know. I seriously do not have the answer to that question. If I did, I probably wouldn't be wasting my time writing some blog right now. I'd be out somewhere, completely happy, or completely fulfilled, or whatever one does after having discovered the meaning of life.

I've heard a lot of different theories on the meaning of life, or the purpose of human existence. For some it's God, for some it's to be an actor, for some it might be to eat the biggest stake in all of Northern Michigan. Simply due to the fact that none of those things have sounded appealing to me, I can conclude that each individual has their own meaning or purpose or road to take in order to feel fulfilled in their life.

As to why we're here on Earth existing in the first place, I don't know. And to be completely honest, I don't much care, either. I'd rather be here than not, and I'm sure that's the case for most other people. So who's to care about why and how and by whose doing?

PEOPLE EAT 8 SPIDERS IN THEIR SLEEP ANUALLY. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW.

"God will not accept that. Mine won't. Will yours?"

-Bono

"God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan", and I did. And then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq", and I did."

-George W. Bush

God in the year 2010.

As I believe is evident through the Bono and Dubya quotes above, the Christian God in 2010 is not exactly what it used to be. People take liberties to make “their” God think and say what benefits them. Bono’s God does not allow injustices against impoverished folk. But hell, maybe someone else’s God does, amirite? It takes all kinds, I guess. And apparently, there’s a God for every kind. Gods that allow you to have premarital sex, Gods that smite you for smoking pot, Gods that require you to give Churches money, Gods that are okay with Gay marriage, and Gods that are okay with just about anything, or maybe even nothing at all. It seems to me that the more people are convinced that they know what God really is, the more obvious it becomes that nobody knows. If the “real” God is the Christian God, then why do so many Christians have such conflicting views on God after all reading the same book?

-Because it’s inconvenient. The Bible oftentimes preaches against things that we don’t want it to. We want to have premarital sex and get tattoos and get drunk and be selfish and indulgent. And from a psychology/sociology perspective, it makes perfect sense…but wouldn’t it be nice if there was a God? Someone always looking over you, telling you what to do and rewarding you for complying? Wouldn’t it be nice if after you die, you go to heaven, and be in paradise with everyone you’ve ever loved?

The answer is yes. It would be extraordinarily nice. But if people were to follow the Christian Bible exactly, they wouldn’t really enjoy their earthly lives. So they need to create for themselves Gods that allow them to do mostly everything they want to (and in some cases tell them to COUGH IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN COUGH).

In 2010, God is a crutch for people who want to live their lives undisciplined and unstructured by religion, but are too afraid to face a life without someone watching over them, and too afraid to face a death without a heaven.

Modern Day Socrates.

Who is the modern day Socrates? Well, folks, let's take a look at who Socrates is, and what Socrates does. Socrates had the gusto to make people question everything they believe in, even if they believed their faith in said belief was unshakable. Socrates was also extremely intelligent, giving him the ability to ask the right questions at the right times. One of Socrates' most unique traits was that in his "dialogues", he used a strategy that some refer to as "mental judo". When using said "mental judo", Socrates would "dodge with the punches", so to speak; taking whatever someone threw at him and using it to his advantage. Apart from tactics, Socrates was also pretty popular. He drew crowds, accumulated followers, and gained attention from even the Greek government.

So, I was looking for someone shrewd, socially aware and popular, which isn't really that hard. That could be one of hundreds, thousands, even. It has to be more difficult than that. And then it dawned on me. I was looking at it all wrong. Although referred to as "mental judo", it's secretly not judo at all...it's karate. Karate is much more aggressive, which although on a surface level, Socrates is not, he is one of the most successful debaters of all time. Debating is a very aggressive activity. Although his methods seemed passive and judo-esque, they are actually aggressive in nature because of the end result he had hoped to achieve(winning the argument).

Then another thing occured to me. Is "mental" really the correct wording for what was really going on? No. The answer is no. Socrates was a philosopher and a debater for such a long time that it became easy for him. A habit. Second nature, almost. When you stop thinking about doing something and just instinctively do it, it's more cognitive than anything. So, what Socrates' real method was should have been called "Cognitive Karate". So then I was looking for a dialogist as shrewd as Socrates. As socially aware as Socrates. As well known as Socrates. A Dialogist who Included Cognitive Karate. Or a D.i.c.k, for short.

Then it hit me like an obese filmaker in a baseball cap and wire frame glasses. I knew it all along. If there is one man in the modern age who is not only intelligent, socially aware and popular like Socrates, but is also a total D.i.c.k., it's Michael Moore. (click the link).