The Crestfallen Kind

I think even though we forget about them all the time, downtrodden
people never forget about us more fortunate people because they once
were like us or they have always wanted to be like us.

Just want to do something meaningful, you know? Yes, writing a novel
or coming up with the answer to the origin of the universe is
meaningful, but that's not what I'm talking about.

I just want to be nice not just to the people that have taken niceness
for granted. People in the mainstream world expect niceness out of
each other. If the receptionist talks with less than a smile, they
automatically assume that he or she is just rude. They go
complaining. Niceness is not just nice anymore. Niceness is
required; it's part of the etiquette. Common practice.

And then there are those that receive no niceness because of how they
dress, or how poor they are, or whatever their circumstance. They are
greeted not only with no niceness, but treated with no dignity. When
the days grind on you like that, you'd have forgotten what niceness is
and how it feels like by the end of the day. Well, guess what? Even
the meanest person travelled down a path to arrive at where they are;
they have reasons to be the way they are. So what about them? We go
pointing fingers at the receptionist who's stressed out? We accuse
poor people, the downtrodden, the homeless for the community's
problems? We call people we've wronged terrorists? I just wish that
I could stay quiet and watch and listen and understand.

I feel like I should be volunteering right now because I don't want to
forget.

Evolutionarily un-weird

Teddybears, flowers, chocolate and jewelry aside, exclusivity is the most valuable thing I can ever give to anyone. It represents all the opportunity costs in time, in feelings and, most importantly, in memory that I am willing to give, but can never get back -- not even when you do want to give it back.

Once you let someone in, there is no turning back. It is not just the pain, but this someone will always have a space in your mind, your memory. The places, songs, scents, words ... all that will remind you of that person. Your emotional real estate will still be occupied no matter how hard you try to pursue an eviction.
You are marked with a scar.

Formulaic

A stroll downtown
+
Lunch at Sushiland
+
Country club wedding
+
Camping
+
Doing it
+
Getting serenaded
+
Fighting and making up
+
2 swollen ankles
+
30 some odd rounds of bullet shells
+
A good night of laughter with roommates
=
Some good memories

Memorial Memories

Well, this weekend was pretty good. I mean, even despite getting mad at Brian a couple of times. I'm always the one getting mad at him, rarely him at me. I am just more particular about things.

So in short, Friday night , we just stayed home coz I was tired and was throwing a fit about decision-making. Yeah, don't ask.

Saturday was such a good day. First, we went to the Farmers' Market, where I took some pictures. Then, we went to the Saturday Market, followed by a good meal at our favorite sushi place, Sushi Land. We went home after lunch, dressed up and went to Laura's wedding at a country club. Laura is someone I work with.

The last wedding I went to, I was 10, so I really had no idea what to expect, except that I knew no one at the wedding, short of the few people from my workplace that showed up. Two of them are, well, bitches. The other was my cool boss. But who hangs out with their boss, right? No, actually, we got a table set up just for Brian and me, my boss and his wife and another couple that are friends with Laura. It was so much fun! I think we were the loudest table at the reception. Haha! Brian was dashing, a witty guy who makes things happen, such as getting us a table when there was no more seats for us left. Oh, my amazing man.

Sunday morning, we went camping at Cove Palisades. It was really nice at first ... a nice day, nice company ... until we talked about kids, the ones we don't have yet. Yeah, again, don't ask. I spent that night by myself and -- ha! -- managed to twist both of my ankles and jam my wrist in the dark and cold night while Brian was complete trashed and having fun. Not so much his fault as it was mine, but when I put those two pictures together and compare, I just can't help but to feel even more frustrated: having lots of drunken fun versus freezing half to death and twisting in pain alone. I was rather miserable. You'd think someone would have at least been curious enough to come check on me, but no. I didn't really think about this until now, but I wonder what would have happened if I had disappeared that night instead of just hurting my ankles. I mean, nobody even thought about me until late at night. Obviously, I felt quite abandoned and worse than I did orginally. (Note to Brian: in the case that I don't show up for hours, come find me. I could have fallen off the cliff or something.)

Next day, we went shooting. I shot a gun for the first time. Actually, I shot a shotgun, a rifle, a revolver and a semi-automatic handgun of sorts. It was fun. I got to take my aggression out. I'm normally somewhat of a firecracker already. Now, I really wouldn't mess with me, if I were you.

Anyway, now I'm at work. Let's hope nothing happens to me here.

Number Blank

How is something special anymore if you have already given it out a bunch? How can one share an experience with you and call it special when that experience has already been share with many others?

I don't understand. What is "special" supposed to mean anyway?

Don't tell me it's special because it's sharing it with me. I know I'm special, so please tell me something I don't already know.

I think it's simple economics, really. Increased supply, decreased demand. The more of it you give out, the less special it gets.

Ok, let's test the theory.
Let's take music, for instance. Playing the same piece of music with different people certainly doesn't make that piece of music not special. Some might even go to the lengths of saying each time you play it with different musicians is special. But if each time is special, then what is special?

If everyone is special, doesn't it also make everyone the same? No, just because it's different than others doesn't mean it's special. Special means to rise above all, its being different than others makes it better than the rest.

So if I'm special, then why do I deserve only the same experience that everyone else had?

Isn't this how the world work? My conception of how things work is starting to blur, and I'm starting to get confused.

Urrgh

Ever so often, I just get bored with myself. I'm bored with all the things that I've been doing, and I'm tired of the limited abilities that I have -- I guess I'm just ungrateful with what I have.

Sometimes I really wonder, without the constraints that are being put on me by others as well as myself, what I can achieve. Or what are the hidden secret abilities I have in there that I just never knew. Oh, who knows? Maybe I can even fly! Ok, maybe not, but ... you know what I mean.

Kate Fox's English "Importance of Not Being Earnest Rule"

"The Importance of Not Being Earnest Rule

... To take a deliberately extreme example, the kind of hand-on-heart, gushing earnestness and pompous, Bible-thumping solemnity favoured by almost all American politicians would never win a single vote in [the UK] -- we watch these speeches on our news programmes with a kind of smugly detached amusement, wondering how the cheering crowds can possibly be so credulous as to fall for this sort of nonsense. When we are not feeling smugly amused, we are cringing with vicarious embarrassment: how can these politicians bring themselves to utter such shamefully earnest platitudes, in such ludicrously solemn tones? ... [I]t is the earnestness that makes us wince. The same goes for the gushy, tearful acceptance speeches of American actors at the Oscars and other awards ceremonies, to which English television viewers across [the UK] all respond with the same finger-down-throat 'I'm going to be sick' gesture. You will rarely see English Oscar-winners indulging in these heart-on-sleeve displays -- their speeches tend to be either short and dignified or sel-deprecatingly humorous, and even so they nearly always manage to look uncomfortable and embarrassed. Any English thespian who dares to break these unwritten rules is ridiculed and dismissed as a 'luvvie'."

Kate Fox is a British anthropologist and is the author of Watching the English.

Well of Water

Sometimes I think that my desire to write and to express myself comes from my mother's inability to do that in her life, like a well with creative water saved up for me.

Where It All Began

The most current issue of Time magazine did a special on Jamestown, the place that gave birth to the ideals and contradictions that the US stands for today. The month of May marks Jamestown's 400th anniversary, and yet 400 years later, the problems that surfaced then are still unresolved today.

What is it about the iconic believes that mark this country as being so glorious and so pure -- even angelic -- that they eclipsed an ugliness that has been poisoning this country for the past 400 years, but kept only as an undertone?

Liberty and democracy as presented by representative governance was only a ploy to expand greedy business ventures at its onset.

Foreign diplomacy and peace meant guns and blood and death and conquest.

Survival meant taking more than your fair share and some more.

Justice meant retribution of suffering equivalent to extermination.

And sins were not sins if they were done by slaves and indentured servants.

The roots of the country were rotten, its foundation weak, its trunk hollow -- but, undeniably, many fruits have grown on its tree. Yet, can this country still grow and sustain without facing up to the storms of the past and without evaluating what ideals have we been hailing as glorious? Are liberty and democracy now so different -- renewed! -- from what it was before?

What does this mean in regards to the war in Iraq now? What about those poor and starving at home and abroad? What about those still indentured in the ghettos of cities? What about our enterprises that are decendents of the Virginia Company 400 years ago? While the colonists have gained what they seek, what about the surviving Virginia tribes that are still struggling to seek federal recognition? What have we learned -- or, have we?

What do you stand for in relations to the country's history and its present?

Where It All Began

The most current issue of Time magazine did a special on Jamestown, the place that gave birth to the ideals and contradictions that the US stands for today. The month of May marks Jamestown's 400th anniversary, and yet 400 years later, the problems that surfaced then are still unresolved today.

What is it about the iconic believes that mark this country as being so glorious and so pure -- even angelic -- that they eclipsed an ugliness that has been poisoning this country for the past 400 years, but kept only as an undertone?

Liberty and democracy as presented by representative governance was only a ploy to expand greedy business ventures at its onset.

Foreign diplomacy and peace meant guns and blood and death and conquest.

Survival meant taking more than your fair share and some more.

Justice meant retribution of suffering equivalent to extermination.

And sins were not sins if they were done by slaves and indentured servants.

The roots of the country were rotten, its foundation weak, its trunk hollow -- but, undeniably, many fruits have grown on its tree. Yet, can this country still grow and sustain without facing up to the storms of the past and without evaluating what ideals have we been hailing as glorious? Are liberty and democracy now so different -- renewed! -- from what it was before?

What does this mean in regards to the war in Iraq now? What about those poor and starving at home and abroad? What about those still indentured in the ghettos of cities? What about our enterprises that are decendents of the Virginia Company 400 years ago? While the colonists have gained what they seek, what about the surviving Virginia tribes that are still struggling to seek federal recognition? What have we learned -- or, have we?

What do you stand for in relations to the country's history and its present?