Saturday, August 27, 2011

Irene Instills Initiative. Interesting...

Sweet mother of [insert deity here]!  Isn't it astounding that I can go four months without writing in here, without so much as an explanation?  Is it more or less of an insult to my intelligence that I cannot even reason with myself to come up with an appropriate excuse for my literary hiatus?  A hurricane has to make landfall for this saga (for lack of a better word) to be reopened, apparently.  I'm not sure if an apology is in order or not.  I suppose I will have to resort to the usual technique; write incessantly until all memory of my literary drought is washed away.

Two distinct moods are present within my empty apartment.  On one hand, it is somewhat therapeutic sitting alone in this enormous space, with nothing heard but the rain, increasing wind, and my own keystrokes.  On the other hand, the silence is eerie and foreboding, and the emptiness somewhat saddening.  Perhaps it is this very duality that has finally put me in the mood for writing again.

If the amount of writing I attempt coincides directly with a contradictory, yet ultimately pleasant mood, I fear for my future career.

So far I have been successful in saying nearly absolutely nothing in the most verbose way possible.  I suppose I have all of those years of high school writing, that is to say writing about something I clearly have scant knowledge of.  Yet I was in the top ten percentile of my high school graduating class.  Add that to the list of things I truly don't deserve, with all of the nonexistent effort I put into high school academics, it would have been more appropriate for me to be a C student, at best.  College sure was a wake up call- actually having to try to earn good grades?  There's a concept that is very foreign to me.

Writing to cure boredom is a dangerous hobby.  Unfortunately, it has become my first line of defense against the most contagious of mood-altering disorders, boredom.  Boredom is an interesting concept.  (Irony!)  There should be no reason for a person to be bored at all, considering the options available to amuse oneself at any given moment.  Granted, my opportunities are somewhat limited by the arrival of bad weather, but even that is by choice.

Simply put, we are bored by choice.  The opportunities one has at any moment are so vast, it would be impossible to name them all.  I myself can think of several stimulating, or otherwise productive activities I could potentially be engaging myself in.  (I'd rather not list them all, as it would only further the guilt I feel in not pursuing these activities.)  I'm fairly certain that I'm not alone in this type of thinking- there is a whole host of interesting things to do, yet the initiative to actually start them is not present.  Therefore, it is not boredom itself that is the factor here, laziness acts as the catalyst to boredom; because simply, it's too damn tiring to actually try doing anything.

Hopefully future entries will not be as sparsely placed, and although I can promise nothing, I can certainly take the initiative to try and write more.  Unless it gets boring, of course.  Thank you for reading!

Word of the day:
penurious - adjective:
1. Extremely poor.
2. Extremely frugal or stingy         

Friday, April 22, 2011

Zombie Jesus - Christianity is Terrifying

I'm always a little bit unsure as to how to start talking on here.  Do I just type whatever comes to mind, and hope that through the endless stream of nonsense comes a glimmer of rationality?  Fuck no.  I just like to type whatever pops into my head!  Well, not whatever pops into my head.  I'm sure that almost none of you are thrilled to be reading about my sexual fantasies.  Or perhaps you are; I'm not going to make sweeping generalizations.  I hate sweeping generalizations.

Speaking of things that I hate, Easter is coming up in around two days.  That's right; the day that the supposed son of God resurrected, and we hide chocolate eggs and eat lamb to consecrate this miracle.  Now I love chocolate and lamb as much as the next guy, and I'm certainly not going to knock commercialism (let's face it- Christmas would be the most boring fucking holiday in the world without its rampant consumerism and schmaltzy decorations) but I just find it hilarious how such a religious holiday could be transmogrified into something so hilarious.

Leave it to us to sugar-coat (literally) one of the most profound tenets of the Christian religion.

Let me be clear; I have nothing against the concept of Christianity, if it gives you hope, a reason to live, happiness, that's absolutely fine.  It must be pretty important if schools close do to Christian holidays.  (I fully support this endeavor.)  Just please don't try and force me to believe something that I don't think is true.  I take somewhat of a modern view of religion, I consider it to be more of a philosophy than anything else.  Granted, it's a philosophy that people will literally die and kill for to protect it, but it is a philosophy nonetheless.  A philosophy is nothing more than a belief.  You can base your life on your own beliefs all you want, just don't try to change mine.

Back to what I was saying, I always wonder how religious holidays get transformed the way that they do.  The Easter bunny is an excellent example; a giant fucking rabbit going to houses leaving chocolate eggs among other candies in baskets by your fireplace.  What is it about a magical being breaking into your house and leaving gifts that is so applicable to children?  I'd be fucking terrified knowing that at some point a giant rabbit is going to be inside my house.  Furthermore, how does this rabbit know which houses celebrate Easter to leave your baskets?

Silly conspiracy theorists, the government isn't watching you, the Easter bunny is!  

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Speechless Doesn't Exist In My Vocabulary

Thus ends another Tuesday.  Don't be deceived by the timestamp for this blog post, it's actually three hours shy of the actual time.   I'm not entirely sure how exactly to change that; and believe me, I've looked.  Apparently I'm on the west coast though, that's what the time explains.

Right now is one of those sparse moments in my existence where I'm actually at a loss for words to type.  Normally on an occasion such as this I would refrain from posting entirely.  However, it is integral that I learn to write even when topics for writing are very scarce.  Whatever the English major I have finally decided on is preparing me for will undoubtedly involve a great deal of writing, even when I have next to nothing to say.

I must admit, despite the sarcastic nature of my blog's title, it is a genuine fear of mine that the things I say are no more than a meaningless conglomerate of thoughts.  Clearly if this is so, there is literally no purpose for writing.  My endeavor to broadcast my thoughts with the world has become stream of consciousness writing. (Which I despise to no end.)  But that brings a much larger concept to the forefront of the discussion. Does there need to be an absolute purpose to everything one writes?

Think back to your childhood days, where I'm sure most of you kept some kind of journal or otherwise written log of your thoughts.  I particularly remember that my journal was intermittently punctuated with pictures amid all the writing of what had happened during the day.  Those journals are now long lost. Do the entries themselves, and the whole journal, by extension, become completely and utterly worthless?  Did I waste my time in the past, writing these thoughts, feelings, and events down, only to lose them?  Furthermore, is this blog nothing more than a high-tech, less secretive copy of what I was doing during my childhood?

Have I changed at all since childhood? The answer is no.  I'm very nearly the same as I was, only with more social conditioning.

Admittedly the journals I kept back then, and keep now, were and are a very successful form of catharsis.  All of my feelings and thoughts purged from my mind onto the physical or in this case computer generated page.  Writing all of this simply makes me feel better.  It also allows me to catalog my thoughts to a certain degree (for can one truly "collect" one's thoughts?) and revisit them.  That's all well and good, but what of the very words I'm typing now?

I have long since abandoned keeping a written journal (other than a small poetry journal) and my musings are, for the most part, written here.  This is as much for me as for anyone else.  From a very young age I've wanted to find some way for my thoughts to be presented to the world.  I did, and still do believe that my thoughts are of some worth to the world.  Who's to say whether one person's thoughts are more or less significant in the context of the world?  It's all a matter of networking and popularity, (think about it, philosophy is little more than well-publicized products of the philosopher's mind) which leads me back to this blog.

This is why I love blogging medium of writing.  It is an excellent way to publicize my thoughts, as well as coming to conclusions that I would not have otherwise drawn.  Until next time!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Neglect, the Lifeblood of Destruction

At this point in my blogging career, I'm facing an existential quandary.  What exactly was the purpose for this blog, and why have I been putting off writing in it so much lately?  I can answer the first question with very little thought.  I blog because I have shit to say, shit that I can't announce in public without drawing in suspicious glares.  Shit sometimes so deep (at least to me) that if you stepped in it, it would bury you right up to the neck.  (I decided to spare the "so deep it's over your head" metaphor, lest you imagine inhaling my shit.)  Without rambling too much, essentially I've just got a lot of shit to say, and I don't really give a shit whether you think my shit is worthwhile or not.  Thus ends the discourse about my shit.

It remains to be analyzed why exactly I haven't been writing here.  I have thoughts that I wish I could proclaim (to anyone who wouldn't murder me for them,) more frequently than I could possibly produce a statistic for.  Then why, in glorious Cthulu's name, have I been neglecting to write in it?  I'm just going to reason out all of my excuses for neglect.  Let's see where this goes.  I'll play both the role of prosecution and defense here.

1) I'm in college.  I've got, you know, homework to do, exams to study for, and a social life to keep well-oiled.  Plus, I like to sleep.

Well this one I can disprove easily!  The average amount of homework I have nightly now amounts to about an hour and a half.  Occasionally more, and quite frequently, less or none at all.  I also don't study a great deal for exams.  This may be detrimental to the learning factor, but I generally receive good grades.  I also don't go to sleep until about 2 am. 

So that only leaves room for the social factor.  I love to be around people, as any human does.  Whether you believe it or not we thrive on companionship.  It is, after all, the only way to assure a constant stream of reproduction.  However, there are times where I find myself with socialization on the lower end of the "What I Want to Do Today" spectrum.  So naturally, those few introspective moments should lend themselves well to blogging my ideas, right?  Nope.  This is mainly true because of my second point:

2) The Interwebs are fucking distracting.

If there's one establishment I've been the most ambivalent about, it's Facebook.  Obviously it's an excellent way to keep in touch with people, and further share my thoughts with the world.  It's also detrimental to my blogging career, if you can even call it that.  (What a fantasy it would be, being paid to do this.  Alas, I can only dream...)  I further cite my social life as reasoning for not writing.  Facebook is the electronic equivalent of hanging out with friends, only without the constancy; the most you can get at one time is a snapshot of life, that updates every few minutes or so, depending on the activity of the Facebooker. (Facebook worm, perhaps?)  It doesn't really require constant attention.  Yet I stare at the page for minutes waiting for something to happen.  If I added up all those minutes, this blog would be a great deal more enriching.

I guess all of this adds up to the ultimatum that:

3) I'm lazy and easily distracted, realize it, and do nothing about it.

Awesome.  Now that I've identified the issue at hand, I can (hopefully) take care of it.  Or perhaps, I won't.  Either way, I'm about out of things to ramble about at the present moment.  Until later, then!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Identity Crisis

What makes me a poet?
Is it that I write with intent,
or that you read what I write with intent?

What if there is no intent, just words;
meaningless, seemingly nonsensical and superfluous verbiage,
and you manage to decipher a meaning from it?

Further, is it poetry if I did not mean for meaning,
or if I simply meant to take away the means
by which a reader such as yourself would interpret any meaning?

Do my emotions have any weight, any substance at all;
so that in weaving the thread of stanza, rhyme, and meter,
they provide the dye of comprehension?

How do I know that if I scream anger on paper
sadness will not effuse from your eyes?

How do I know that if I laugh at the page with mirth,
or press it to my heart with grief,
any blood or tears of mine are of any worth,
other than your own personal belief?

I can't assure a single thing, can I?
You love to keep me guessing, don't you?

The joke's on you this time, I'm afraid.
Keep me guessing and struggling to assure myself that I am a poet,
because as long as I'm doing that;
  
I am.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Hideaway

I'll take you to a place.
A place you've never been before.
Won't tell you when or where,
Or how I'll get you there.
But I can promise one thing,
You've never been there before.

I'll let you in on a secret.
This place you'll go, it has no name.
A location, for sure,
Though nothing more.
But I can assure one thing,
You've never been there before.

I can only give you three hints, one,
You've seen it somewhere recently.
Perhaps in a dream,
Certainly, it would seem.
But I can confide one thing,
You've never been there before.

Another hint I'll give you, two,
I talk about it all the time.
Soft, spoken words,
I'm sure you've heard.
But I can ensure one thing,
You've never been there before.

The final hint I'll give you, three,
It's much closer than you think.
Deceivingly near,
Don't draw a tear.
But I can pledge two things,
You've never been there before;

And once you have,
You'll never want to leave.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

This Is Just a Test....

So I've made the decision to import my writings here into Facebook. I'm not entirely sure whether this is a good idea or not, but it will certainly permit my blog to be more accessible than it is. This is only a test to see how effective the technology really is in updating my notes for the blog. I hope my (hopefully) larger number of readers will enjoy this!

Odi et Scribo

This is the shortest and longest blog post I will ever make. Why even bother, perhaps you wonder? Hell if I know, but I know what my intentions are and the rest of you can enjoy yourselves trying to figure them out.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Mind over the Mundane

I've noticed a paradox in the way I operate these days. I complain to my friends about how I need to sleep more, how I'm constantly tired, and anything else of the sort. Yet here I sit, twenty minutes to two, writing my marginally interesting thoughts.

I'm clearly not the only one awake, as the gentle rhythm of Sublime's Doin' Time playing in my room is mixing with the members of my dorm screaming and running down the halls. Now, I'm not particularly opposed to this sort of merriment, as on occasion I make it a practice to scream and run down halls. The only difference between them and I is that I limit my escapades to before 11pm. I've been blessed with the incredible fortune to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep with immense amounts of noise playing around me, but this certainly has to be rare. I'm astounded that not one of the other members of the dorm accosts these people for being inordinately loud. Before this becomes a rant, I'm going to end this. I did not start this blog to complain about my life, merely to reflect.

It's funny that I would say that now, because right now I don't have a great deal to reflect on. Yes, college is rushing by as everyone said it would. Yes, so far they're the best years of my life. My life hasn't been particularly noteworthy, so topping it is no extraordinary achievement. What is fodder for wonder is how quickly this so-called best experience of my life becomes mundane. I greatly enjoy living on my own, free from curfews and hourly calls from my mother asking where I am, (though she still tries to ask) but it is astounding how quickly this experience becomes routine. Is every new life experience destined to become monotonous for me? That's rather chilling to try and assess, as this is a hallmark of depression. However, in noticing that I exemplify an aspect of pre-depression, do I effectively annihilate any chance of having it, at least currently?

Enough with the rhetorical questions. I have enough of those to deal with in my rhetoric class. How about a well-rounded answer?

The mundane arises from the halting of variation in daily life. Clearly, I have not attempted to vary my college experience enough, if I am assuming it to be monotonous. In analyzing this, I have discovered a trait about myself. To a certain degree I welcome regularity. I am complacent with some degree of a schedule. Perhaps to combat my issue I should let some aspects of my experience remain as they are, while continuing to experiment with different ideas.

It is here that I will elude to a sexual relationship, perhaps that is what is best to explain it. (On a completely related but unintended note, Caress Me Down just started playing, so this must be the correct analogy). Everyone is awkward the first time, as it is an experience for which there can be no preparation. With time, you begin to develop a rhythm (pun entirely intended) and begin to draw on sexual aspects that are familiar. It is here that the pivotal division point occurs between monotony and continued interest. Should one continue with the tested methods, a sexual relationship can become boring and predictable, which no self-respecting sexually active person wishes to occur. Tried methods can be incorporated, but experimentation will effectively spice up any sexual exploit, even if it doesn't work. Knowing what doesn't work is essential to deciphering what does work.

Moral of the story, keep some familiar methods, but don't abstain from straying away from the norm. Especially in bed. Or on the floor, on a table, against the wall, whichever you please.

I greatly enjoy confronting my own doubts with self-generated circuitous rhetoric.

That's all I've got for tonight, I hope the three readers I likely have at this point enjoyed my writing, thanks for staying with me. I'm exhausted, goodnight all!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Decisions, decisions.

What is the purpose of sharing this blog with the world? Perhaps the world is a bit on the ambitious side, I highly doubt more than ten people have even so much as scanned one or two entries on this. This brings me back to my initial question: for what purpose do I labor over my own keyboard, typing whatever thoughts I have, whether they simmered in my mind or simply arise the very moment I am typing? Is the reason because I wish for the world to know some of my thoughts, perhaps even my thought processes, so people may gain a higher profundity of understanding of what makes me, well, me?

(Insert vehement claim of non-understanding, dripping with the cold black liquid of teenage angst here.)

No, after roughly thirty seconds of thought it becomes at least somewhat clear why I even attempt to communicate my thoughts with the world. It is simply because I have something to say. It very well may not be of the utmost importance, but then again, how can anyone know whether any particular action one makes is insignificant? Certainly if one is a romanticist, as I have tenuously deemed myself to be, any action as simple as choosing whether to open or close a door, or whether to eat the lobster bisque or the vegan fennel soup, can impact your life, as well as the lives of the people around you. (I believe that I have mentioned this before, regarding whether or not I wished to wear my Latin shirt. I regretfully admit that I have lost my Latin shirt. Felipe, there is no need to worry about wearing it, for mine does not exist. Perhaps you stole it?)

What has been plaguing my mind these past few weeks, comes to the topic of decisions. I've made a few rather large ones in the past few months, deciding upon pursuing an English major, deciding to grow my hair out, deciding to enter into another relationship. After a pre-sleep analysis of these decisions, I came to a somewhat powerful ultimatum. Every single aspect of life is based on a decision one makes. Just sit for a moment and think of everything that has ever occurred to you in life. Are not the consequences, where you stand currently, a direct result of deciding to do one thing over another? I sit here in my college dorm room, content, for a variety of reasons. I was successful in becoming enrolled in college and taking the necessary steps for financial aid to pay it all off, thus I sit in my dorm room, on Busch campus, which I decided to live on. I am content for an even larger multitude of reasons, the fact that I turned the heat up, decided to wear my favorite flannel shirt, did all my homework yesterday, and spent most of the day with my girlfriend. I could just as easily be sitting distraught at home if I had decided upon a drastically alternate course of action in my life. It's rather scary when you think of just how many aspects of your life can go awry based on a single decision.

That's about all the rambling I've got for tonight. I'm off to enjoy one of the two redeeming factors of Tillett dining hall, (widely considered to be the worst dining hall on campus), calzone night at takeout. To anyone who cared or was bored enough to read, your literacy is always appreciated!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Shameless Early Morning Posting - Happy New Year!

Why is it that inspiration only strikes me in the wee hours of the morning?
Is that really when the current of the creative river that is my thoughts flows most swiftly?

Hell if I know.

For all intensive purposes, posting at 2 am could be a direct result of my boredom, mixed with the fact that "normal" people have gone to sleep already, rendering any attempts at contact futile, topped with the delicious sprinkling of "I am nowhere near tired enough to try and sleep." Whatever the case, here I am once again annoying the masses with my miscellaneous collections of thoughts, that I deem significant, (ah, the irony! See blog title...) enough for the public to be made aware of.

2011 is finally upon us. It never quite strikes me that an entire year has passed by until January 2nd of the next year. Often during these particular periods, I take the time to reflect upon the past year, all its trials and tribulations, successes and failures, positive and negative choices and the consequences of these choices, etc. However, to do this in one night would require immense amounts of recollection and typing that quite frankly, I am far too lazy to undertake. The only words I have to say about 2010 and everything that occurred during the year are these: they're all over.

While the concept of a year is humanity's attempt to categorize passages of time, logically separated by revolutions of the Earth around the Sun, for symbolic purposes I like to catalog all of the events before January of the next year as "last year's events" and only use them for learning purposes that may benefit me in the year to come. 2011 then has the ability to become a clean slate, something that is inevitably desired by many, even if they are not aware of it. How many people do you witness wishing that they could simply "start over" and forgo all of their past experiences to pave the way for a second chance? I am particularly fond of this concept because similar to any and all human beings, I have made several mistakes over the past year. Though some of them have set me back a great deal, as a human being I have grown dramatically both psychologically and emotionally. I will take this time to be sappy, something that has never been seen in this blog, and state that I never imagined I could enter successfully into another relationship, had I been at the point I was during the summer. Fate has once again thrown me for a loop, and presented me with an opportunity I came very close to ignoring, giving me the gift of a significant other. With this establishment something has occurred that has been hitherto unheard of in my mind, actual hope for the future. Who would have thought that 2011 would bring with it the ray of sunshine I have both spurned and yearned for? Oddly enough, I have no profound new year's resolutions to speak of at the moment, apart from further developing my writing, singing, and guitar playing skills, as well as actually following through with the concept of getting in shape.

The idea of sleep is at this point beginning to pervade my thoughts, and the thought of being cocooned in my comforter is proving to be an endeavor I wish more and more to take with each passing minute. In other words, I am actually succumbing to tiredness. Goodnight to my infinitesimal amounts of readers, and a Happy New Year to all!

"His heart is a suspended lute, when one touches it, it resounds." -Edgar Allan Poe