It’s amazing that one’s opinion could lead one to so much trouble. I have a friend who loves to write, and writes a lot of her opinions all over the `net. She seems to need her privacy, though. She seems to not want some of her thoughts seen.
It saddens me to see people silenced. No, she’s not really silenced. She still writes. But fear of repercussion has prevented her from publicizing all of herself.
I suppose that she has a right to privacy.
This friend of mine also deletes her entries occasionally. Regretting what she said, I suppose. I wonder why. Fear of misinterpretation of her entry over time? I’ve written entries in the past that I feel may be taken the wrong way, and I’ve gone so far as to write a public explanation for my words.
Another friend of mine seems to need to choose her thoughts very carefully. One wrong step and her boyfriend will be down her throat. She disallows comments in many of her entries because her boyfriend will question their relationship with her. Insecurity, I suppose. Many voices, silenced for the sake of one’s insecurity.
The Freedom of Speech. Fought for so hard by our predecessors, yet shut down so easily by our peers. No guns required, no angry mobs.
A long time ago, I was walking around Manhattan, probably along the outskirts of Chinatown. I was minding my own business, walking along, when some guy, who seemed lost or something, stopped me. He gave me this whole big speech about what he did, and how he was all peaceful and never hurt a fly. Well, that’s a very abridged version of it, anyway. I kind of tuned him out, because I realized that he didn’t want directions, he wanted money.
Eventually, he got to the point, and asked me straight out for money. In his nice, long-winded way of his, of course. I lied and told him that I didn’t have any money. He asked, “You don’t have any money?” I told him no. He then said, “I’m a monk.” It was only then, did I notice his odd hat covering most of his head, with little to no hair showing. I forget.
Anyway, he then asked me, “You wouldn’t lie to a monk, would you?” I shyly replied, “Maybe…?” He then had a nice chuckle and rubbed my hair, and told me to get going. So I left.
Back when I lived in James, I had to worry about how far the available parking spots were from the building. See, parking spots were rare and valuable in James. Sometimes I would be forced to go to the parking lot in Langmir instead. Other times, I’ve had to go all the way to Benedict.
Of course, there are the parking permits. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the system, we are required to have parking permits for our cars, which expire every year on the 30th of September. So, eventually, my parking permit expired. I, however, was too lazy to renew it. Thus, I now had to find parking spots that faced a forest or wall or something. I do this in the hopes that the cops are too lazy to actually check to see if my permit was valid, therefore satisfied with just seeing the back of the permit.
Recently, my car has been acting up. Ever since I got it back from the shop a month ago or so, it has been reluctant to switch gears. Initially, it had trouble reversing, taking a couple of seconds before it finally got into the reverse gear. Also, it had trouble switching to the third gear. I had to go to a very high speed on the second gear until it finally popped into third gear. Ah, the joys of an automatic transmision.
That was true, up until about a week or two ago. Now, my car just won’t go into either of those gears. On the highway, my car is screaming for mercy as it is forced to go at 50 miles per hour in second gear. It simply does not reverse.
Now, that presents a very interesting problem when it comes to parking. I have two solutions to this problem, so far. One solution is to find two spots that were free and were facing each other. This required a larger parking lot, typically found only in malls, and a rarity in dormitory parking lots.
The other solution involves befriending gravity. I would find parking spots that are on a slant, so that gravity can pull the car out of the spot. I could, conceivably, back up into a spot instead, so that I just need to drive forward and out of the parking spot. However, there’s the problem with the expired parking permit.
Sometimes, I would be lucky, and gravity would pull the car out when I put the car into neutral. Other times, I was not. The other night, for example, I had to have my friends repeatedly slam their bodies back onto their seats, using inertia to push the car back. We even had to count, “one, two, three!” and synchronize ourselves, for maximum force. That worked for a bit, but not when the car needed to make a turn back. Then, we tried having my friend in the passenger seat and I open the car doors and push the car back with our feet. That worked for about two inches. Finally, two of my friends got out and just pushed my car out. The guy in the car next to ours looked very confused, and decided to help these two girls out a bit. After the three of them pushed the car out, we were able to move forwards and proceed to watch Harry Potter.
Yesterday morning, we had the same problem when Eric and I went to IHOP. I drove around the IHOP for a bit, but all the parking spots sloped in the wrong direction. Finally, toward the back, there were a couple of spots that sloped the right way, and seemed to slant enough for my car to roll out. After we finished eating, though, we were proved wrong.
It was raining, so neither of us wanted to go out. However, we still needed to go. So, we first tried the good old inertia-is-our-friend trick. That didn’t work. Then, we tried opening the car doors slightly and kicking the car back. That worked alright, except for the fact that the floor was slippery from the rain.
So there we were, two fools inside of a car that couldn’t back up, feet pathetically slipping as we kicked the car back. I kept watching for cars to see if they were coming our way, but luckily, there were none. Eventually, we pushed the car far out enough for me to drive out of the parking lot. Eric laughed his ass off the whole time. The worst part was realizing that there were a thousand other parking spots that were empty and facing each other at the mall, which would have prevented this dilemma in the first place.
I’ve finally done it. I figured it was possible, but I never thought that I would be able to survive it. I’ve screwed up my sleeping schedule even more. More so than ever. Now, I’ve been waking up early instead of late. Getting tired late early in the evening. Just today, I woke up at 9:00 a.m., all by myself!
I probably would would be asleep, if it weren’t for Sharon, Ellen, and Christina begging me to take them to watch Harry Potter. And, of course, late night card playing and drinking with Wendy, thinking that she was going to commit suicide or something.
I blame my wretched sleeping cycles on my friends.
Yesterday, I woke up when someone called me. I picked up the phone, but, as usual, they hung up already. It was dark outside, and I looked at the clock, which showed 6:00. I thought, what a bastard, calling me at 6:00 AM.
Then I realized that I had slept at 9:00 AM this morning.
I proceeded to sleep another three hours, giving me a total of twelve hours of sleep.
After one particular person read this blog, she responded by saying that I was very angry. She told me that I was immature, that I was like a typical, angry teenager. I believe that this was primarily in response to what I wrote in my rant about web design. Honestly, at the time that I wrote that entry, I was infuriated.
See, my job is to create web pages for a particular department of the school. This department used to have a web page, but it was old and didn’t look very nice, so I was hired to redesign it. I’ve done my job, but in order for anybody to see this web page, the school’s web page has to link to mine.
The problem is, the school’s web master refuses to link up to mine. She claims that my site is a travesty, and that it does not conform to the school’s standards for “official” school web pages.
So, now I had more work to do. I go about making the web page conform to the school’s standards, including ways to contact the web master (me), adding links back to the school, and making the web site more accessible to the disabled.
We again request approval of the site, but she very rudely says the same thing. In fact, my boss was unwilling to retransmit her message to me. I was informed, however, that it was a completely unconstructive rant and did nothing to help me in my quest to conform to her hypocritical standards.
So, we try to contact her, to ask her what, exactly, she finds so appalling about our site. The only thing she replies back with is a link to the World Wide Web Consortium. Keep in mind that I’ve been using the W3C to validate every page on my site, and that every page on the site has a “Valid XHTML 1.0” banner on it.
I’m not alone in this, either. She is notorious in the school for being a prick. My old boss, who also wanted to create a web page for his particular department, went straight to another department to host his web page once he saw her rules.
The worst part is, the school’s web page, which is under her control, does not conform to the standards that she sets out for everyone else.
Maybe she just hates me, though. After all, she was the old web master of the web site I am now managing. Maybe she just has power issues, and wants to still be in control.
So, I hope that clarifies things a bit. I’d hate to let my rantings to unjustified, and have them automatically shovelled off to the lunatic section of the Information Super-Highway.
As a guy, is it morally right to hit a woman? In high school, I had guy friends who said that they wouldn’t hit a woman, no way. At the time, I thought the same way. Interestingly enough, my female friends thought that a guy had every right to hit a girl. I mean, as much of a right to hit a girl as they had a right to hit anybody, anyway.
Today, though, I don’t know what I would do. It all depends on the situation, I guess. On one hand, there is a chance that I am physically stronger than the woman, so I should be able to just take it, while she may not. On the other hand, it would be downright unfair to the guy if a woman pounded a man into a pulp just because he won’t hit a woman. That’s just taking advantage of a poor guy’s morals. That’s as bad as an abusive husband or boyfriend, who beats on his partner just because he knows that he’s stronger and there’s nothing they can do but take it.
I don’t think that I would hit a girl, unless there’s no way out of the situation without hitting her. If I feel that there’s a chance that they will actually hurt me quite a bit, I’ll probably do my best to disable her to the point of her not being able to hurt me any more. I guess that’s how I would deal with any person, though, male or female.
I sometimes wonder why people actually write in their online journals. It’s not like they really have anything to say. Nothing to offer to the general public. Yes, yes, I know that they’re not trying to become the next featured member of Xanga or whatever, but still. Some people just write loads of crap onto their journals, consisting of nothing more than one sentence nonsense. Some classics:
“I do, I really do…”
“Wow…”
“Man, physics sure challenges the brain… ;]”
Yes, those are whole entries. Strangely enough, his friends continue to encourage him, by commenting and giving him eProps. I don’t know what it is about eProps, but apparently, to some hardcore Xanga users, they’re worth more than gold. Each comment will invariably have two eProps tagging along with it, as though the comment were actually worth something.
And is one eProp worth any less than two? When was the last time anybody has given a single eProp? When was the last time anyone has even written an entry that’s deserving of a double eProp, which, according to Xanga, would be for “exceptional content”?
Who cares what mood you’re in? Who cares what music you’re listening to? If it were really important, then they could be easily integrated into your entry as normal sentences, and not as:
Current mood: Ecstatic!
Current music: Barbie Girl, by Aqua.
Of course, there needs to be gratuitous amounts of smiley faces and other stuff to back up the fact that this person’s current mood is, in fact, what they say it is.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I demand more than just a log of what exactly happened to you that day. After all, that is what a journal is for, I suppose. But it would be much nicer if all of you were to show the world that you’re not just a robot that goes on doing stupid stuff and doesn’t think at all. Please, just put some thought into what you write, write about what you’re thinking, what’s intrigued you during the course of today. Everybody has problems. Everybody goes to work, goes to class, goes to parties, sleeps all day, thinks that girl is hot, and wants that car. Don’t you have any other thoughts in your head? Don’t you ever notice that nobody really cares about the elections anymore, because it’s just a matter of voting for one rich guy over another? Don’t you ever notice that people waste a lot of water brushing their teeth, by leaving the faucet on at full blast the whole time?
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s all that goes on in their heads. Maybe they’ve already spilled their guts, showed the world what it’s like to be so-and-so. Maybe I’ve been correct all this time, sarcastically calling people as a whole lemmings.
I hope I’m correct in assuming that there is some sort of thought process that goes on in each and every one of your brains when external stimuli triggers your senses. I hope that life for most of you is not just a series of reactions upon reactions to the same, mundane events that happen in your lives. Or there will be a very dreary future for all of us.
Why do people think it’s so horrible to curse? It doesn’t make anybody any less civilized, it’s not a mortal sin, it doesn’t kill anybody. I try not to curse because I find that cursing distracts the text from what it’s trying to say, but sometimes, it’s just necessary.
I hate it when people try to avoid cursing by simply replacing the words and/or letters. I’ve had friends who completely replace the word “fuck” with “fudge”, and they go on cursing, only they give themselves an accent. “Shut the fudge up,” they shout. Others try to say fck, sht, or even h*ck. (Honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with saying heck, but I guess that’s just me.) Still others just use the letter, saying, “Life’s a B,” etc.
To me, all that is as bad as cursing. You had the full intent of cursing, but you felt ashamed of doing so, or you felt that you were cheating the system by not indulging in such sins.
It’s like technical virgins. They suck cock, they fuck anally, they participate in orgies, they let guys ejaculate in their hands, in their asses, on their faces, and in their mouths, as they savor every drop. Yet they do not let a guy put their penis into her vagina. “No way, I’m no slut,” they say. “I’m saving myself for the right man.”
I’m not saying that people who do stuff like that are sluts. It’s okay to be a “slut”, especially if they’re a girl. Why should guys have all the fun and freedom? You have the power to entice, use it.
But being a borderline hypocrite by avoiding doing something just by a technicality is not the way to live life. Their whole ideal system is nothing but a sham, a lie. Just do it, or don’t do it. Don’t do it and fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
I was appalled. No other word can describe what I felt at that moment.
I am a strong believer in equality, amongst other things. Equality among races, equality between sexes. I am an adamant supporter for women’s strength and ability, self-confidence, and independence, overall. However, a couple of weeks ago, I had this interesting discussion with one of my female friends and her roommate.
It started out as a discussion about her roommate not wanting to work out, because she doesn’t see the point. She believed that, even if she were stronger and faster, that she wouldn’t be as strong and fast as a guy, so if she were ever attacked, then her work out wouldn’t help her at all. When I argued that she should at least try to give them a bit of a fight before they can overtake her so easily, she basically stood her ground. She saw my lips move, but no words came out.
We then somehow moved our discussion to matters of how a girl depends on the security that a guy brings to a girl, in a relationship. Basically, it came down to the fact that, no matter what, a guy should be responsible for taking care of their girlfriend, even if he weren’t physically there. If anything should ever happen to the girl, say, she was raped, then the boyfriend would be held accountable for sixty percent of the blame. It doesn’t matter if he was just away at work or something, and left the girl at home. (And if he were present at the time of the attack? Forget about it!) They claimed that the relationship would eventually not work out, because there wouldn’t be the trust in the relationship. They would lose faith in their boyfriend, for not being there to protect them. They would lose their precious sense of security.
At the time, I was completely shocked. I was seething with anger. Not at them, but at the way they thought, at the way society has molded us into who we are today. Here I am, advocating that women should be treated as equals, that women are just as capable as men. Yet they themselves feel a need to be protected, deep down inside. They need security. They see themselves always as the victim, and a protector is needed. They don’t want a boyfriend, but a watch dog. They don’t for intelligence, personality, looks, body, large sexual organs, or wealth, although all these are bonuses. In the end, they’re just looking for someone who can make them feel invincible with. Not because they themselves are invincible, but because they are dependent upon someone who is invincible.
What’s the point? How can I help them, if they themselves don’t want to be helped? My friend, I had believed to be quite strong and independent. If even someone like her believes in these things, deep down, then what hope is there for the rest of the women out there?
I have changed a lot, in the past couple of weeks, maybe months.
I look back at myself a couple of months, and I think, “Wow, who was I back then?”
I feel like my true self is more shown to the world now. I’ve shown the world that I am not just this… thing. I am not controlled. I am insane.
I used to share this insanity with Irene. We were insane together, in a sense. We would do crazy, stupid stuff together, and it would be alright. However, she suffocated me. She held me back. She kept me in check.
She told me that I was too crazy. She told me that I was shouldn’t act like this in public. She was self-conscious of not just herself, but of me, who I was, because I was a trophy of hers.
Enough of that.
It began with Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. I read. I understood. I became.
For about a week after reading every comic that Sharon had, I was loose. Free. Uninhibited. True.
I felt nothing in the world mattered. Life was a joke. Have a few laughs! It was a great week. I felt relieved. Unstressed. I cared not what the world thought.
Then, of course, slowly, I turned back. Slowly became more conservative with my actions, with my speech.
Break-up.
Chillaxin with some of my friends was nice for a change. I was still inhibited, though. It’s odd. I felt loose around them, free to do whatever I wanted… but yet, it wasn’t enough.
The cat got let out, and my clone was freed.
We spent time together, some in all seriousness, others in pure insanity. Gradually, my spirit was released. Gradually, I began to change. Confidence grew in me. Confidence or apathy at the world’s thoughts? I don’t know which. Either way, that’s what happened.
Thank you, Nny, for showing me the way. Thank you, my clone, for walking with me.