head for the hills

dear steve nash,

congrats on your MVP trophy. i'm sure it will look nice up on your fireplace next to....last years....MVP trophy.

you are my hero.

sincerely,

me.

p.s. your new sig shoes look swell. please release them earlier so i may purchase them.

volcano

"i know this is where i belong because even when i'm tired going in, i always come out of it energized"

i've been mulling this statement over for the last little bit. my friend uttered those words naturally, as if it was just the way things should be for everyone. crystal clear as mud i guess. nothing ever seems that cut and dry.

then again, maybe life really is that simple.

i just don't know it yet.

on marriage

so in about one months time, me and two female companions will be jetting off to europe for a month of eating and sleeping. mostly eating.

upon realizing that i would be travelling with two chicks, my parents (after i had already told them, and bought my tickets, and had several planning sessions at my house) suddenly had a panic attack about my spending all that time cooped up in close quarters with two girls.

after crying, throwing up, and taking a long cold shower, i responded to their fears in my typically calm and soothing manner. i assured them i wouldn't knock up my female friends (apparently this is a common problem to them), and that i would not return with a porno moustache and a membership card from the international youth orgy club. i then proceeded to rip my eyes out of my head in an attempt to quell the vicious tide of nausea.

i did however manage to leave open the door for me to knock up a random stranger in europe -- that circumstance did not seem to be as feasible a scenario in my parents minds.

i have yet to decide if that is insulting.

slow company

so for a weak willed individual such as myself, possibly the worst place to keep a giant bag of skittles is right on my desk, staring me in the face everytime i sit down.

on the bright side, each serving is 45% of my daily vitamin C intake.

i have officially fullfilled my daily vitamin C intake. times seven.

mmm....like drinking 7 bottles of yop.....

you should be hated here.

it may be a telling sign that i still consider weezer my favourite band.

some people know quite definitely that they are afraid of change. i can't say i quite fall into that category. conversely, i wouldn't say i'm the kind of person who looks forward to change. of course everything in life is situational, but by-and-large i would say i am completely and utterly indifferent towards change.

my apathy has served me well in the past, as my lazy nature may be construed as loyalty in some cases, while in other cases it has allowed me to adapt to new situations with relative ease and comfort.

i cannot help but notice however that something my ambivalence does not take into account is the fact that change is inevitable. i've finally been realizing a lot lately how much is changing around me -- how people, relationships, situations, and expectations are evolving.

it's not for the best, it's not for the worst. it just is the way it is i suppose, which is alright by me.

but i'm enjoying the fact that i'm choosing to acknowledge change at least in that it is significant in our lives, and not something we should take for granted regardless of (ironically) how immutable the ebb and flow of time may be.

it just makes me feel like i'm noticing i'm alive, you know? so i don't miss anything, because not only is everything an amazing blessing, but it all just goes by so....

....damn....

...fast.

overture, holiday

it's kind of strange how you can literally choose how to feel.

you can be having a great day, a crappy day, or a day that ranks among the most mundane in existence -- but perspective is such a matter of personal choice.

learning to harness that power for good rather than evil is the kind of thing that makes normal folks superheroes in my eyes.

sender

it's hard for me to understand how a child could not enjoy gym class. i mean, c'mon. you don't have to be good at sports to enjoy running around in circles. you get to play something -- that right there sure as hell beats sitting at a desk counting down the clock.

how does an entire generation of children develop such keener tendencies? what happened? is this the result of dilligent, hardworking and academic minded parents just overprotecting their kids? don't get me wrong, i'm not saying there's anything wrong with enjoying reading and learning, but what causes a kid to not like running around outside?

i really don't get it. everyone says that children are just too preoccupied with television and computer games and all that crap to play outside -- i just don't buy it. if from the very start you play sports with your kids and take them outside to run around, they will grow up enjoying those things. watch baseball with your kid, play basebal with your kid, guess what? odds are good they'll have a passing interest in baseball. i'm no child psychologist, but isn't that just common sense?

if you're kid is fat and geeky, frankly i fully expect that it's because their parents are too lazy to spend time with them and have delegated the task of parenting to a bunch of screens. i find in situations with children, i pretty much heap 95% of the blame on parents. i wonder if that's fair.

maybe i'm being too judgmental. i've never had a kid.

but i'll be damned if i they don't grow up to like gym class. that just ain't right.

underneath the weeping willow

this is one of the coolest pieces
of clothing i have ever seen.

i want one...





















http://www.socialsuicide.co.uk/

the worst taste in music

a rough recap of my daily routine the past two weeks:

1pm - wake up
2pm - eat lunch
3pm - email/trip planning/surfing/blog reading
4pm - light reading
5pm - watch sports highlights
5:30pm - watch PTI
6pm - more sports highlights
7pm - go play basketball
10pm - eat dinner
11pm - play dota
12am - play guitar
1:30am - dailyshow
2am - colbert report
2:30am - csi reruns
3am - angel reruns
4am - light reading
5am - fall asleep

rinse. lather. repeat.

i have two options: i should either stop feeling guilty and enjoy the chance to relax like a maniac, or i should just wake up earlier and do something productive.

actually, that's not true. i guess i could also just wake up earlier and be equally unproductive.

awesome.

the kid is already breaking

i like to fancy myself somewhat of a connoisseur of MSN display pictures.

there are a variety of genres that most pictures tend to fall into, and i feel they often say a lot about who we are.

the webcam pose, or the "i enjoy looking at myself"
the friends, or "attractive friends make me cooler by proxy"
the candid, or the "look at what i've done and how interesting it makes me"
the couple shot, or "this picture earns me brownie points as well as raising my stock"
the default images, or "MSN is not a pastime. it is a communications medium"
the interests picture, or "these are my hobbies. i think they help define me"
the humourously random picture, or "i'm a non-conformist. i'm also probably ugly"
the artsy photo, or "i am more original than you will ever hope to be"

and of course, there are pictures that do not fall into any of these catagories. naturally there are always exceptions in life, so i will not bother discussing these because they are either too stupid, or too genius for me to comment upon (i.e. pictures of your naked body probably mean you are a whore).

do not take offense if i have captured your essence based purely on your MSN picture. after all, i have a keen eye and brilliant mind for psychological deduction.

swans

my internal clock is so messed up.

the sure fire sign that i've seen too many episodes of 'what not to wear' is that i'm completely amused by dressing my yahoo avatar. so this is what it's like to play with a barbie.

fascinating.

speaking of wasting time, 3:45am CSI is fast becoming something of a ritual. must fix myself.

the quote of the week, taken from time magazine --

[re: the US immigration issue]

"Attrition through enforcement: instead of allowing the illegal population to grow every year, we start enforcing the law inside the country, something we don't do at all unless your name is Mohammed and you work inside a nuclear power plant." (Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies)

i fell off my chair laughing when i read that sentence, hahahaha

it's so rare time prints anything even remotely insightful. usually they have articles like "someone invented a solar powered toothpick that will change the world forever".

damn split runs....

as an aside, i find about 98% of the time i actually type the words "hahaha" i am completely stonefaced.

i'm either a compulsive liar, or i really like to make people feel at ease.

star witness

it's weird how the second you've resigned yourself to not having something, opportunity knocks. and even though you think you've made your bed to forever lay in, God shows up in the way you had hoped, but not in the way you had expected. is that bad? that i'm so cynical? or maybe i've been protecting myself from being hurt -- from getting my hopes up.

i've always been unsure of what's ahead, if it was me or if it was Him. confirmation is a wonderful thing.

Praise the Lord!

burn up the bay

there are some things in life that i just don't understand.

why didn't the gay cowboys from brokeback mountain just move somewhere more tolerant of gay people? it was like the 1970's, do they realize the party they could have had in san fran? it's akin to a polish nazi being scared of being called a racist during world war 2.

why doesn't mike james ever pass the damn ball? does he get a contract at the end of the year based on how many shots he makes this season, and is just going for sheer volume without a conscience?

why make a musical out of the Lord of the Rings? did they hire midgets to play the hobbits? are the midgets good at singing? who can really take a singing midget seriously anyways?

what are the requirements for getting an infomercial to air? it surely can't be the quality of product -- have you seen the q-ray bracelet? it doesn't DO anything. they might as well be selling voodoo magic pills. "Wear this bracelet and it will cure you of every possible human ailment, as well as align your posture and make you more likely to get laid".

what's with girls and pointy shoes? you're literally trying to project a deformation of one of your bodyparts. is it a subconcious effort to look more like a robot? a way to pay respect to geometry? if i were to wear a hat that made my head look like a rhombus, would that be haute couture?

if straight people watch straight porn and find gay porn uncomfortable, and gay people watch gay porn, do they find straight porn uncomfortable? if a lesbian were to watch gay-male porn, or a gay male to watch lesbian porn, would that be like the most confusing and awkward of pornographic viewer/content permutations?

the mysteries of existence.

you're alive

searching for inspiration.

i will write an awesome melody. oh yes, i will write an awesome melody.

european oils

most people would say i'm laid back, but if you have spent enough time around me, and if you've seen me in the right situations, you'd quickly learn that i'm actually a really competitive guy. in my younger days, i'd say it was actually bordering on over competitive.

with time and age however, i've learned to only be selectively competitive. i've realized there are things more important than winning, and now i'm more concerened with effort and doing things to the best of my abilities than i am with the outcome.

lately i've been finding myself unable to get motivated unless i essentially trick myself into being competitive. i make finding a job a matter of pride. i make being self-disciplined a war against the people who have a set idea about the kind of guy i am and what i'm like. at times, it's a war against myself even.

i've approached my spiritual life exactly the way i'd approach basketball -- i'm facing a challenge and doing it for the sake of pride. because i want to win. because i want to prove i'm better than you think i am.

it's a psychological thing. athletes do it all the time. kevin garnett has often been described as psyching himself up so much before games that he wants to kill the other team once he steps on the floor. kobe has thrived on the haters. even when people shower him with love, he somehow skews it in his mind into doubt, and he uses that to fuel his game.

it works for me. it makes me more productive than i could otherwise be. but i don't know if i can keep this up.

can i really WILL myself to love God? can i make it a matter of pride to be devoted? to be strong? to be sacrifical and obediant? do the means justify the end?

i feel like i'm proving to myself that i can do this. when in the end, i should be depending on Him to finish the job he started. and i do. but i'm so scared to take my hands off the wheel -- to fall into the trap of doing nothing at all with naive expectations.

is that really trust? i don't know. no one said it'd be easy, but i know things will happen in time. i will follow through the best i can. what more can i do?

He will replace the shame in my heart with fire.

what's mine is yours

looks like we have a RHF update. head on over and check out what those crazy high fivin' robots are up to now.

so speaking of learning things, although i can think coherently at 4am and get work done, it is painfully evident that the phase of my life where this was my prime productivity time is long, long gone.

what is it about night time that seems to get the creative juices flowing anyways? the only time i write anything amusing during the day is when i've just pulled an all nighter.

exhaustion breeds originality. which in my mind equates originality and stupidity to being pretty much the exact same thing.

clover

is it just me, or are bitter people just flat out more interesting than happy people? i mean seriously, compare your content and optimistic friends to your cynical and jaded friends and tell me who would keep you more engaged in a three hour conversation.

sure, it might make you feel better to hear the words "it's all good" over and over, but come on. everyone loves to hear some dellusional and irrational ranting. it's what makes conversations worth having. it's just so much more amusing seeing people spew forth vicious bile from their souls rather than just gloss everything over with a contrite little sheen, like putting an eric lindros rookie card into a plastic protective sleeve.

we're too hard on bitter people. hell, i only wish i was more bitter sometimes. i do my best work when i'm bitter. those who know me can attest to this -- nothing feeds a hateful heart better than when life gives you lemons. in fact, even when life gives me grapefruits i still find it's more fun to complain than it is to settle for being content. besides, grapefruits taste like crap, they're pink, and they're too large to carry around in a brown paper bag. who the hell wants a grapefruit?

where would we be without the egocentric? the self-focused? the narcissistic?

we'd be bored, thats where we'd be. so give a little love to your bitter side; its natures defence against a mid/quarter/any-sort-of-quasi-dead-end life crisis.

unrelated, but i bought a box of pant hangers today. although i have absolutely no use for them, at 15 cents a hanger, i have no regrets whatsoever about my purchase. if the success of my days were measured in the boxes of pant hangers i amassed, then today would be a great day. a great day indeed.

grasshoppers in honey

you know, life is a lot like a jamaican beef patty. they're cold and frozen to start, but depending on how much effort and time you put into making them, they can either come out kind of wet and droopy, or nice and flakey. and everything is filled with mildly spicy beef.

ok, so maybe life isn't like a caribbean meat pastry. man am i sick of eating patties. on the bright side, a bag of dried mangoes has appeared in the pantry. mmm...tasty.

anyways, the moral of the story is that sometimes you need to just recognize the fact that life is going to keep on keepin' on even if we try to fight it. there's a lot to be said for chasing our emotions, but there's a lot to be said for understanding when to put in work, and when to cut our losses. mistakes are made, lessons are learned. but in the end, it's at the very least a very satisfying feeling when you know that in retrospect, you actually did make the right choices using experienced gained from the past. it's like -- hey look! i'm an adult!

and as everyone knows, that's half the battle.

now that i think about it, maybe life is more like a bottle of yop....

no....no its not.

tonight i'm gone

my desktop looks awesome now. thanks to some help from ry and a spiffy new winamp skin, i must say my computer is more amusing to use now because everything just looks so damn cool. novelty is an amazing thing.

so lessons learned today are that when in doubt, don't trust anyone. if you want something done right you gotta just do it yourself dern it.

i like how maybe becomes half-truths, and things unsaid turn into things said when stories are told.

if i vow to do one thing, it's to be aware of what comes out of my mouth at all times.

also, i hate cammie. foreeeeeeever.

woodland hunter (part 1)

although that last.fm chart says "last week", it actually lists the 3 most recent songs played. i don't know why it says it's from last week, the internet is full of little tricks like that. you gotta keep your head up or you could be the next chump.

it's weird how much can change in the blink of an eye.

despite the saying 'a picture is worth a thousand words', i still think there are many things words can explain so much more precisely than an image. that might sound simplistic, but it's surprising how much visual interpretation we make in a day.

but anyways, here's some simple words -- i want to be a musician....dreams die so hard.