Lessons (A Personal Pseudo-Essay)

"Hunter-32, Hunter-32, this is Fanboy-7 requesting confirmation of target, are we clear to drop payload, over?"

"This is Hunter-32, target confirmed. Fanboy-7 you are clear to drop Some Personal Shit." 

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There was a quote from a movie I watched recently, one featuring the budding comedic genius of Adam Scott alongside the J.K Simmons called The Vicious Kind, which was ultimately a film about people making their choices, and subsequently living with said choices. And it's not a pretty film. There's pretty people, but you get to see the ugliness inside them. It's not that popular, but I'm positive its on Netflix.

Any Adam Scott fan should check it out, because his performance is the best thing about that movie -- you haven't seen his acting range until you've seen The Vicious Kind. Some awesome accompanying songs from Radical Face, who's amazing, to compliment the raw, bare energy of this character drama.

I'm telling you about this because I watched Argo at Rainbow Cinemas on Front and Jarvis a few hours ago; caught the late show after 8 hours of studying today for my midterm tomorrow, that I don't partcularily care about now that I've retyped my five weeks worth of notes. You know, I took Science Fiction for the hell of it, not even sure I'd get the credit. But I took it to learn something. And my professor -- but she likes to be refered to as Doctor -- opened her mouth the first week of class and ever since then she's chipped away at the only thing I really love in life. Thanks, university.

I mention The Vicious Kind firstly because of a quote that's pretty potent in thematic significance that JK Simmons' character says to his son (the one who is not Adam Scott-misogynist-crazy-version).

"Sometimes people do things they know they are wrong, but they just do them anyway. Because doing the right thing would be too painful." 

Thematically, that movie was strong as hell. This quote doesn't relate to the film, it directly relates to my life personally, and (indicating that the writer did their job with this specific line) every other person that watches this film. It's almost a universal truth, in my humble opinion. 

We are humans. We are capable of thinking intelligently -- but intelligently doesn't necessarily mean an objective moral structure of right and wrong dictated by some scripture, or rulebook, or words uttered by a mentor, mother, father, or teacher.

Thinking intelligently is dictated as to what that individual considers intelligent. People are intelligent in different ways, we're wired like that. We can read people well, we can have powers of social manipulation, we can study and memorize with outstanding capability, we can gush out charisma on a whim, or we can sit in a room and ponder life's questions, and be able to actually figure some things out without losing our minds. We are all intelligent in that regard. Some people just use their intelligence stupidly.

I'm being coy because I see it in the real world. Here's where I go into Argo, that, by the way, is Ben Affleck's best film he's ever made, and proves that the man has artistic and directing talent that surpasses a lot of people older than him in the big industry. I won't spoil the details, but I found the themes of the plot centered a lot around the relationship between fiction and reality. Story and life. The fake and the real.

That quote from The Vicious Kind? That's something pretty real. The way it was constructed and manufactured to be communicated to you? Complete fabrication, but it's more real of a sentence you'll here coming out of someone's mouth (let alone JK Simmons') than you've probably ever experienced in your life. I know that's the case for me. While the way it was said is fake, unsurmountably an illusion made by a team of people, what's being said remains true to the core. That is the essence of theme, probably included in the definition of it when relating to storytelling.

But the medium is the message, as they say. What is reality but another media that we percieve the world through? I mean, this day and age, the lines are blurring -- how are your eyes not just another screen you see the world through. How fake is that? How real? My point is, reality can be extremely fake -- it can fool you into believing things, trick you into feeling things, uproot your understanding of things, and change the trajectory of your emotional state, mental state or physical state in a minute, even a second.

We never trust reality, and we rarely trust the characters (actual people) that inhabit that neverending show of This Fucking Life. Unpredictably breeds the desire for reassurance of purpose and direction. Something true amidst all the chaos of fakeness...

Stories. Argo told me that reality and fiction go hand-in-hand in the human experience. One will drive the other, under a symbiotic relationship. Stories can save lives. They can inspire entire passions. They can sooth pain, create excitement, generate genuine emotion. Make those endorphins run rampant through your neuroses. Fire the receptors. Feel something true. It's the drug without the side-effects.

The side-effect of partaking in the experience of a story, is learning something about yourself and the world around you. That comes from a construct of imagination and hard work, made for an audience that craves the drug of feeling and emotion. You sit in a darkly lit room and pay eight dollars for candy and pop for that. You set your DVR in the morning for that. You wait a week for that and complain about it and then come back every week after, for that.

So what's more real? The reliable versus the unreliable. What you can touch, taste, smell, or what you can feel -- not just on the surface, the superficial experience. The interior, intrinsic. The sinking pits in your stomach, the butterflies, the goosebumps and the lightness in your chest. The true.

We say, "life is sometimes like a movie" because of those feelings that are generated. I ache for the day that my life can resemble the fiction that I read, watch, and play. For a fraction of my existence, there's a structure and a cadence to the rhythm of my actions -- that plot points emerge that I can read and analyze and piece together into a fulfilling final act. Roll credits. Happy ending. And there we go.

Sometimes people do things that are wrong... because it makes them feel things more real than their realities. It alleviates the pain of being stuck with the reality that we have, and take that solace, and that escape, of the possibility of getting something more. Of feeling something else. Feeling like in the movies. 

Feel like the characters we so blatantly worship in boxes with blinking lights and strings of data pieced together for a two-storey blank canvas.

I say this to my friends who are going through a tough time, or a tough break-up, or a tough day.

"Characters are what people want to be." - Anthony Suen, Self-Righteous Modern Messiah

Characters, at their core, have definable, categorizable qualities. They have the perfect balance of flaws and virtues. The weighing of their beliefs against their vices, and a carefully planned out exploitation of those elements to create their path towards their end goal. An objective -- characters have that consicous or subconscious dramatic need that always pushes them to go that extra mile.

People? We're reflections of the lives we inhabit. The realities we're stuck with. Our objectives can change on a whim or a bad night out or a worse morning after. They can be as simple and insignifcant as getting a fucking job or as vague and unattainable as changing who the fuck you are as a person. There's no defined path, no grand writer building our character arcs. As much as we want to be a puppet with a purpose, there are no strings attached to what we have, right here, right now.

The wind has purpose, it blows currents and temperatures to where they need to be and stabilize our climate, hopefully for a bit longer than scientists posit, but they do what they're told to because nature tells them too. So, not even "feeling like the wind" in being aimless and ungrounded in your desires is a fitting analogy. You can "storify" anything with symbolism and meaning because that's our biggest vice as a humans -- we embody the qualities we want, or rather the qualities we can't have, in absolutely everything that exists. Again, that's how we're wired.

Reality is worse than wind, it has no course, and no currents that it follows, no crowning namesakes that you can identify and plot on a map. Personal experience is being in a dark room with oven mitts, earplugs, and a blindfold on trying to find that proverbial needle in a room full of shit-all.

Okay, I twisted that one a bit. But my analogy ("storifying", woo!) gets to how story and life, reality and fiction, need each other on a basic level, in our brains and thought processes. Stories plop in that lightbulb with the hanging little string, that you can pull in that dark room full of nasty stuff, and the one singular needle that could very well be your very own dramatic need.

It grounds us. Anchors us. Much like many of my close friends do. My post a few posts ago talks about not letting go of your past for anything, because your past defines who you are right now, and will inform who you are going to become in the future. The past is your story. History, personal or as public as the entire world's existence, is one big stage play. The world's a stage, just like Shakespeare said.

And we, The Players, are stuck acting for as long as we're on it. So you stick together -- you make the most of the story you're in. The reality and the fiction that you're creating parallel to each other. So when you do the things that are "wrong", you have The Players to anchor you back to the "right" path.

JK Simmons' character is right, in some regard. And Argo as an entire movie has it right too -- it's painful to do the right thing -- the thing that a character, and not a person, would do. Not what your friend would do, your father, your mother, your siblings, the person you slept with, your ex-boyfriend, your secret lover, your teacher or professor, your past crush, your boss...or you.

We struggle to be that character we wish we were. The ideal version of ourselves. The camera-ready, script-memorized, fully in-character fictional representation that always made the right choices, the decisions that turned out well for everybody, the paths in life that lead to the least people hurt, and the most smiles made. The one with a destination. A destiny.

But no, we don't have that privilege, or that luxury. We cope with reality against the hope for something fictitious to occur. Our dramatic need is to survive the lives we live with the ability to say, you did it the way you wanted to. There is control out there, control that you and I have, and it's sitting in reality, waiting. It's not fake. Not like everything else around us, out there.

Story versus life. Reality versus fiction. The make-believe versus to actual. What's the damn difference?

Me and you. Your experience and my experience. What's inside there, past the organs and the brain signals. The butterflies and the daydreams. It's not about difference, it's about similarity.

There's a story in everything and everyone. Just pick up a pen and write it.

Field Report DES-17734R "Memories"

I've been back and forth between Toronto and Missisauga this week because of Ryerson University's random scheduling this year to include a Reading Week five actual weeks into class. YOLO, one can only assume on the account of whatever asinine leprechuan is dictating how I piece together my life around barely related coursework and pompous, arrogant professor-doctor-authorities.

I digress. I feel like turning this into a personal blog. Because, why the fuck not?

Thanks to a friend for some inspiration on the matter, however. I don't feel like repressing my emotions today, at least not digitally. The internet shall embrace my feelings. I demand it.

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Disjointed Memory from High School #1

Sandra offers me some Honey Nut Cheerios, key word being "nut" and I take up the offer because it's food and I didn't have lunch that day. Shove some in my mouth, I'm a happy camper. Then I realize the nature of the word nut and how my body may not actually agree with the fact that I'm eating something I'm supposedly deathly allergic to.

Kevin just laughs at me, Sandra freaks out. Ms. McInnis goes into Teacher Protocol Crisis Mode, but I tell everyone to chill out, nothing's happening. And nothing did happen. But it was funny for a few minutes. Yearbook class was always consistently funny.
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Disjointed Memory from High School #2

She walks with me down the pathway from the mall towards her house. We stop by the sometimes-seedy Wendy's/Tim Horton's combo complex by the stoplight.

She calls me a dick. She hadn't done that before. I was being a dick.

That's all I clearly remember. I remember standing there, not knowing what to do. What I do recall was a sinking in my chest, a foreign feeling that crept up into my brain and seemed to invade it with anxiety and discomfort that drove me into a quiet chaos that stayed with me the whole while I stood there.

She was angry. When my best friend's angry with me, that means something I did was wrong.

So I fixed myself.
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Disjointed Memory from High School #3

I trek up the west hallway stairs -- I'm not even sure if they were West, I just refered to them as which classes were always there, so probably "Math Hallway". I see Lauren with her friend - I'm going up there to ask what mark she got on the artist statement I decided to write for her out of a little crush I had in tenth grade. She got really good on it, and my own artist statement was considerably worse. The irony still hasn't escaped me after five years. Tenth grade was rough.
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Vague Memory from High School #1

I get spots of it. Pizza Pizza. The trees with bare branches and my Chucks were new-ish at that time. No holes. But there's holes in this. I remember a kiss, feeling bliss. Like I understood the world. I didn't. Didn't matter though -- at that age the world is as big as the moment you're living. Then and there. Nowhere else.

I was a shitty kid.

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Vivid Memory from High School #1

Ms. McInnis and the eleventh grader are snapping pictures every few seconds while I take a step or raise a limb or open a locker and freeze for the photo. We're going to put it together through stop-motion. And I'm going to make up for the self-dissappointment of not contirbuting enough during Grade 12 Yearbook, a class that sticks with me to this day.

We take at least an hour. There's hundreds of photos but I'm excited to sift through all of them. Ms. McInnis saw the lyrics I wrote, the silly scribble that I did as a joke, an afterthought, and she managed to pull my talent out of that. I'm eternally grateful.

We shoot it after school, and it's fun. The most fun I've ever had doing something school-related. It lifts my chest instead of sinking it. Makes everything okay. Everything that sucked, for four years, is okay. I have something here. Keep it.
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Vivid Memory from High School #2

"I'm gonna write you a break-up letter in this."

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Disjointed Memory from High School #4

It's my last year in Model UN. Wenhan's become the leader of the club. It's tripled in size since Grade 10. Seeing her lead something is funny. Seeing her do it well makes me proud as hell.

Vivek and I push forward an amendment to wipe Chile off the map with an bomb strike, or an artifical earthquake, can't remember which. Jason is pleased -- the bleedover from last year's Bhutan escapade gives him some smiles, which is good. We should all smile more, it's our last year.

We go legitimately argue on the podium. I'm no longer bothered by staying after school for things.
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Significant Memories from High School #1-15
1) I mash paper in a giant tub with my hands.
2) Ms. McInnis guides me through the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.
3) I get confused by Final Cut's interface. Mr. Fraser laughs at us.
4) I record lyrics in the back room of the CommTech classroom with Kevin.
5) We skip class to go get burgers.
6) I get into a limo with all of my friends.
7) I enter through the doors of John Fraser Secondary School, and it's bigger than I could have ever imagined.
8) I show my portfolio to Ms. McInnis. She helps me better it.
9) "Hey, Reesha, do you know what this means?"
10) "Is that a hickey? My name's Vivek."
11) "I'm Ashley, kind of new here."
12) "Can I join your group?"
13) "Oh yeah, she's so glad she transfered to RTA. You should think about it."
14) Four of us on the beach at night. All I hear is waves. I'm drifting apart from all of you.
...
15) "Anthony Suen is now studying Radio & Television Arts at Ryerson University."
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The Unforgettable Memories from High School #1-4
It takes all my courage to type out those stories. I text her a time to meet outside school. I drag her away from the rest of them, and we start walking home. She's always lived in the same direction, and I never walked home with her. Because I was a coward, and it was the only thing I thought defined me.

The small talk is excrutiating. I get to it before I lose it. Take the pages out, they're bent at the sides, it bothers me, but I hand them to her. I explain my case. Ignore the craziness of my actions. She turns the corner, says goodbye out of respect. I stand there.

I just stand there.
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We lie in her backyard, staring at each other. It's cold, but we keep each other warm. The blades of grass tickle our skin. I just keep looking at her eyes.

She starts crying, talking through tears. About losing me, losing it. Afraid of lasting.

Tears start welling up for me too. It surprises me. I console her, I do my best. I'm still the same kid. 
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We stand outside the Guidance office, big backpacks on, large jackets, middle of autumn. We laugh at lame jokes, make fun of each other. I remember the feeling of not needing to be anywhere else. I remember the weight on my shoulders being slight, soft. Lessened because of the strength of companions. Simplicity. Normalcy. Routine. Friendship.
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Tim Horton's at 1 in the morning. We sit there, playing staring games. Talking about nothing. Not high school anymore, not the same kid. For that moment, I get the same feeling though. Everything's alright.

I play the fool and let it trick me into believing so.
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Present 
I sit in the den, my desktop transfered to my interim basement apartment for twelve months. Laptop connected to the ethernet port, addicted to stable internet. I write this blog post with a transparency I've never wanted to commit to before. A mixture of feelings swells inside my brain and body -- coming back here gives me comfort, going back there gives me convenience. The time for opening up is long gone. I have worked on myself and now it's time to play gatekeeper for who's let in and who's left at the door.

The cycle of people continues to make its way in and out. Those who've anchor themselves have become my anchors. They're irreplacable. Some transients I wish had stayed. Clocks don't work backwards. Right now I wish they did. So I could witness that release of weight off my shoulders again.

I've worked on myself exclusively. I've studied everything about me. I'm an expert now. I damn well know the kind of person I am and want to become.

So these disjointed, cloudy and clear images have done their job properly.

Never look back on it? Never dwell on it?

No, always look back. Every day. See what you were and you see what you can become. Keep those cards close, and always long for something different, always dream for repeats and reoccurances. Chance encounters and reonciliations. Pain away at wishful thinking and nostaglic recollection. Because it hurts to remember the scenes you love. You appreciate what you miss and what you didn't miss equally. It's there. And it feels like it's outside you, it's away from you, but it is you.

This is you. Force yourself to stare at it. Never look away, and just keep walking.

And when I stop, when I put down everything I've looked at, I want to know where I've ended up.

Inevitably, it will be the right place. I hold onto that.

You are the culmination of the people you meet and make memories with. Go see for yourself.

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing In My Life

Sorry for the dust around here.

Finally, I feel the urge to actually write to the Internet about my life, which actually just never happens with me anymore; yes, the concept of blogging itself now disgusts me to the point of personal offense towards the very core of my being. 

All jokes aside, the beautiful four month summers of post-secondary life is mercifully coming to an end, and my God am I grateful because I cannot stand another fucking five seconds of it. It's become this desire to just go out and get shit done because if I don't I'll probably just atrophy and remain stuck in an existential limbo for an undisclosed amount of millennia. I'm not much for melodrama but it seems like the only solution to give this blog any sense of interesting-ness anymore.

Should I invoke a poll system? Because I'd run out of ideas pretty quickly.

What has happened in the four months that I haven't been in media production school is actually not totally banal -- I participated in my first forty-hour work week experience that completely drained me mentally and emotionally. And thanks to my friend who I did not realize was the other intern they just hired until the day before, who gave me much needed laughter and comradarie that I would not have gotten if it was just some random dude or woman who I would be awkward working with for six weeks.

So, I got my first taste of what kind of stuff we actually do as 'content creators' -- I learned very intimately the ins and outs of self-distributing an independent film on a national scale. It is not easy. I like to think that us two being the only main sources of information regarding film distribution, theatre relations, and promotional campaigning, we managed to not suck as much as other people would have. And that is enough to keep me sleeping at night (for like two weeks afterwards, and then everything went back to normal). But it was incredibly eye-opening, I met some damn cool people who let me handle their taxes and budgets, which freaked me the fuck out, and I got a taste of what real people do in this industry. They carry around G-Drives everywhere, and my boss had the biggest wall of geek shit I had ever seen. Also, Studio District in Toronto? Pretty tight. 10 years, tops (if moving Stateside upgrades from Pipe Dream to God is Now Shitting On You).

But I get to put on my LinkedIn, "I was a shipping and receiving department". Because I was. FedEx was like a shitty little cousin who wouldn't go away and do as it was told.

That was MAY. And a bit of June. What of the rest of my life from that point onwards?

I played some video games I had always wanted to. That lasted me about twelve seconds of entertainment, as is the case with video games. Somewhere along the line I had the crazy notion of actually doing something worth my time of being a man-child. Thus, I was writing again.

The reason I've ditched this blog is purely because I'm bad at prioritizing and that I'm still completely in the dark about who reads this shit, since commenting on personal blogs is more taboo than screwing a family member, for the Net Generation. The writing has upped in frequency, to the point of the aforementioned not-sleeping-a-lot. Because I'm just thinking of stories and shit. That's what writers do right?

In the three other months I've had, I bought a bunch of screenwriting books, actually read them, and absorbed information as best I could. Next step was to actually put some words on something -- mind you, my pilot script is still in a second-draft phase. But having a pilot script of anything I like to think makes you at least better than someone. Everyone's better than someone. Glass half full, okay?

My television pilot has turned into an budding project to make it into an actual storyline, with seasons, a plot arc, and multiple characters that keep popping up from my subconscious. The goal is to prepare myself as much as possible for Winter 2013, 5th Semester, when the writing courses actually start. If there is one thing I've learned from my first two years of Radio & Television Arts (now RTA School of Media, because we're not old people anymore), it's that preparation is not some dorky thing only nerds do.

If you write something, shoot something, edit something, or compose something without a plan, you are royally fucked from the start -- unless you are an autistic savant or some particular Asians in our program. This summer has been:

• Learning how to develop character fully -- flesh out inner motivations through establishing backstory, including psychological, physiological and sociological explanations
• The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier is a great tool for learning about any aspects of screenwriting. But this exercise is exhausting and very fun. You are literally making a person out of nothing.
• Practicing screenwriting format, form, and convention -- the technical aspects of writing a teleplay or screenplay. What I've found from reading a bunch of pilots as well as feature specs is, everyone breaks convention. It will be an eternal struggle for me to understand when it's okay to, and when it isn't. But that only comes when you keep writing shit.
• Keep writing shit -- the best thing to come out of this summer is keeping the ball rolling; I constantly have ideas for my fictional universe that I created about a year ago. More spaces are being filled very often. That just leads to more ideas for other things. Balls are rolling.
• My notebook has about fifty pages left, hopefully I start a new one by the time school rolls around. My mind has become something that thinks in scenes, and the only thing to do from there is to write those scenes down. They're know little aside stories to my main plotlines and characters, and serve as backstory research to refer to in the future.
• Pre-visualize everything - that's what season outlines and backstory research is all about. Building the story world is more of a challenge than anything else in writing for screen, big or small. Building the blocks gets you into building your world. But it's painstaking and it takes months, and probably years. I'm on my second. I have a ways to go.
• I have an endgame set up for Hotel Six that will lead into a season finale, and as it stands, a second season that will continue the grand story-line -- which means more world-building and character development. Making people is not easy either.
• Get a writing buddy - call a friend, classmate, distant relative, stranger who you have seen, or luckily know, has the same short-term goals as you: primarily, writing. Be their bud. Have somebody to talk shop with, discuss favorite anything; ice-cream or scenes from Princess Bride. Send each other process work - scene snippets, character tables, lists of ideas. Just talk. Learn from one another. Be around people who give you a sense that you are not wasting your time and your life has meaning. Quite essential. Everyone should have one. Even if you don't write anything. 

That's just one project. I have two movie ideas I've begun developing, one is a genre mash-up, because I love the concept of taking disparate parts and making something cool out of it. The other is something I decided to want to do after watching 50/50, which is an amazing movie, and also inspired the more grounded creative in me to pursue a story that's close to the heart.

I wanted to write something I feel strongly about, something I can materially relate to. The problem was, 50/50's writer had cancer, and he beat it with the help of his friends and family -- there's a good story already written for him. I don't have the luxury of an interesting past. Or an interesting present. So the only solution is a near potential, possibly parallel future. It's about a writer. And it's about imagination, storytelling, our current generation of content creators, and the problems we face when trying to make nothing into something. Don't know where it'll go. But it'll be something. Bet on it.

This is my life. I'm still technically jobless since I was born, in terms of steady income and working the hours per week that everyone else is, and therefore by default, envious that I am not. And therefore, they tell me to suffer the same amount they do, because if I don't do what they do it means something is wrong with the way I'm conducting myself. They're probably right.

So yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing in life. And I'm not happy or sad. I'm not content -- I'll never be content, that's not what writers are. Am I a writer? Fuck if I know. It's a placeholder at the moment. Everybody I know has placeholders, whether they like it or not. It's a perpetual unpaid internship for being a fucking adult. Which sucks. But it's what we have.

As long as nobody else knows what the hell they're doing, we can all be unpaid interns together.

That's three months of words I've caught up on. Now, please give a fuck. Because I finally think I do.

Yeahhhhh..... (An Update)

Totally been neglecting writing anything for the past month because:

1) I'm actually too busy for once.
2) I'm mentally exhausted most of the time.

After the next couple of weeks, I'll be able to free up some time to dedicate to making this blog a bit better for you recurring readers or new visitors--polishing the look of the place, some new content segments hopefully, etc.

The plan is, try and get some more readers on board. With Tumblr these days, any other blog platform, if it's not a professional Wordpress format, gets shut out and pretty much ends up in the social media wasteland. But I'll be a defiant fighter till the end.

Come June, there will be:

- More reviews.
- More themed content.
- More geek stuff.
- More tying into other blogs (maybe)
- More interesting things to read about.

Get stoked. It's summer. Have fun. Don't do 40-hour work weeks on  $1000 honorariums as an emergency replacement intern for an indie film. It'll wear you down.

Also, I distributed an indie film across Canada. I'd ask you to get on my level but you can't even see it from there.

Good Fucking Design Advice

This site makes you want to fucking do better.

Just keep clicking, the advice keeps coming.

I want to live off this site come second year.

And I will. I’m ready. Bring on the design.

Tons more to get you pumped.

I want it to be that easy.

‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. And even the inside of your own mind is endless. It goes on forever inwardly. Do you understand? Being the fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to be bored. – Louis CK.

Word.

New Initiative.

There’s something called Tumblr and it’s been like a really annoying rash that you don’t know it’s there half the time but when it does show up you can’t really avoid feeling it right there, begging to be dealt with.

Well, I scratched it.

This is me. Toned down, brass tacks, simple stuff. If you want to know what I’m up to in terms of my head and its craziness, follow that Tumblr.

I promise myself I won’t re-blog every single cool thing I see, but now that I’m in enemy territory it’s hard not to develop some Stockholm Syndrome. It’s just so easy. There’s even a Tumblr directory devoted to comics. I don’t know what to do.

If I turn, know that I loved you all.

Bee tee dubz, I’ll be concurrently using both. This is for the general crazy shit. The other one, I hope, will turn out to be mainly for the creative crazy shit.

On to something big.

30+ pages kind of big.

Several characters kind of big.

Arms aching kind of big.

I want to be in this world kind of big.

Might turn into something.

Check back in a little while.

Preposterous Thoughts

Mitch Reed’s the kind of guy who will get shit done when he has his mind set on it, finish it, and then fist-pump in the air. And then flip a table and laugh at the person sitting there.

And then high five someone.

Also, he’s famous and he makes video shorts like a boss.

Also, he reps my blog cause he’s a cool motherfucker.

Get at him at his tumblr, folks.

‘Persons of Colour’ is a stupid phrase.

I mean, its pretty outdated. Kind of a dumb thing to point out.

‘Colour’ certainly has a connotation of diverse hues. Like blue, or aquamarine. Or lime. Nobody’s skin colour is lime.

There’s only like, three. Dark brown, brown, and beige. And most of it depends on how much melanin you have or something.

Now, if someone ate a shitton of carrots and turned orange, I think I’d jump on a chance to say he or she’s a person of colour—no, I’d rather say a colourful person.

That way it’s literal and complimentary.

Just say, non-Caucasian if you must. But still, white people have skin, and it’s a colour, and its definitely not white. I know it’s a conditioned phrase, but since ‘minorities’ is the politically-correct term, even though it really shouldn’t be, just use that.

Never mind where this is coming from.

Just know that saying ‘Persons of Colour’ is a faggy thing to say.

Didn’t mean it like that. Disassociations are the first step to tolerance.

PRIDE and stuff

So, I think Pride Week just ended with the Pride Parade in downtown Toronto, and guess what, I went. Pretty much dragged along, a nothing-better-to-do sort of thing, but I might as well while I’m not doing anything really that productive at home.

What I regret, is that I didn’t go with an intention, or much of a motivation. For me, there wasn’t much of a goal. Being heterosexual, and more so, being me, I found it hard to connect with a lot of what was going on. PRIDE Week might as well be Healthy Nutrition Week in my books—pretty much a detached, apathetic observer than a participant, or an activist, or a community member.

I regret it because I didn’t get to appreciate a lot of what I saw. I saw a lot too. There were drag queens, transsexuals, gays, lesbians, straights, couples of all types, topless women, pantsless men, the old, the young, the middle aged; firefighters, policemen, gamers, DJ’s, dancers, singers, school groups.

Saw them all, and I regret not getting to feel something along with them. Because the more I think about it, the more I think about how proud they really are for having the life that they have, and being able to express themselves the way they do.

I’ve never had the privilege of having a close gay friend. I wouldn’t have called it a privilege a year ago, maybe even a few months ago. But if I could talk closely with someone who has gay, I’d learn how to be a better person, absolutely.

I deal with problems—external, internal. I battle with myself, my emotions, past and present decisions. I beat myself up. I hurt.

But it’s obviously nothing compared to someone who is gay. That’s what I regret not taking to the PRIDE Parade.

To be gay, is to be labelled immediately. Without your knowing, and with the inevitable realization—at least in a society where it can be labeled—that you will have to walk with it wherever you go, either waiting to burst through your skin, or having it come out by itself and facing the consequences without preparation, mental or physical.

So much of what defines Western society depends on what someone or something else has told all of us, and we’re conditioned to listen, to the letter, until something or someone different happens and we’re too damn scared to face it that it leads to hatred, ignorance, suicide.

I don’t know what it it must be like, but I know the emotions that a gay adolescent probably goes through. Intensified, I’m sure, much more vivid. Much more concrete and convincing. Not only emotions, but thoughts. To have that kind of seed planted, and the potential of having it planted so damn early in one’s childhood—those roots stay with you. Stay with you into your early adulthood, if not you’re whole life.

It takes an army to pull out that kind of root. Gay people rarely have an army behind them. Surely, it’s quite the opposite. In America, definitely. In Canada, I’m thankful it’s not that bad.

Gay people take more shit from others than I had my entire high school experience. For most, it’s started earlier. And it starts with the first bully—themselves. They ask the questions of their sexuality first. And then others ferment it, reinforce it, and convince them of what or who they are. I may not know it first-hand, but I can relate.

Bullying, ironically, is all-inclusive.

And to fight back from that, to be one of those that crawls, hands and feet, up from the mile-deep hole that others—friends, enemies, parents, strangers—dig relentlessly for them and shove them in it, that takes a fucking powerful person to do.

Gay people are shoved with adversity and hardship right out of the gate, and I’m surprised the child suicides aren’t higher now. In fact, I’m proud they’re not high. Because I know, thankfully, that most of those gay kids who are fighting for that place in a society that mostly shuns them, are succeeding.

The one way I can relate to someone who is gay is that they’re constantly getting back up. There’s no doubt in my mind that they probably feel there’s little left in the world for them, when they’re in, or were in, that place or time, and there’s but one tether, one anchor keeping them from falling off the face of the earth, as if its what they deserve, because someone tells them it.

I thought I had it hard. I didn’t. I still don’t. Yes, it’s hard to stay humble when you’re given such a privileged life. But thinking about something like this gives you those moments. I’m choosing to record it, so I can come back to it, and realize all over again, why there’s something to be happy about in the world.

Gay people are tried and tested. They come out on top, more often than not. I know God would be proud, if he’s out there. If he’s not, all of us that support them are proud, and that’s enough.

I regret not thinking about all this while I was there. While I was there I was indifferent. Detached. Not realizing that what I’ve gone through, and sometimes, what I’m still going through, is an infinitesimal fraction of what someone who finds out they’re gay has to face. Daily, yearly, perhaps for a better part of their life.

But things are changing. Snail’s pace it may be, they are changing. We’re moving progressively, in the right direction. Albeit, it’s often one forward and two back, but I hope with a large quantity of my hoping ability that the veils of ignorance and prejudice pull back one day.

Fuck, if there’s one thing you should be irrational about, it’s hope.

And if you’re reading this, and you’re not sure of your sexuality, or if you are sure, and you’re regretting it, please, don’t. I regret not caring. I regret not being able to walk down a hallway and stop it the moment I see it, and at times, being a part of it. I regret not having the chance to help save a life. I regret not feeling proud for you.

Feel proud. You should. You’re going to beat out everybody else, you’re going to take the worst possible punishment and you’re going to come out on top.

And if you already have, then I’m sure you were at the PRIDE Parade.

The Comeback

Psyche, I never left.

Just recovering from eating my own words with that rant a while back on Green Lantern. But honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Honestly.

More to come if you’re interested. It’s going to be a long summer if I’m gonna stay the same unmotivated, aimless and distracted self. One day it’ll all funnel into something worthwhile, and you can be the first to witness it.

I’ll pay you. In Internet money. I’m serious.

I’m just getting started.

 

Honestly.

Food for Thought.

Big question, bigger answer.

This is why I’m taking philosophy electives.
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An Atheist Professor of Philosophy was speaking to his Class on the problem Science has with God. He asked one of his new Christian students to stand.

Professor: You are a Christian, aren’t you, son?

Student: Yes, sir.

Professor: So, you believe in God?

Student: Absolutely, sir.

Professor: Is God good?

Student: Sure.

Professor: My brother died of cancer, even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn’t. How is God good, then? Hmm?

(Student was silent)

Professor: You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again, young fella. Is God good?

Student: Yes.

Professor: Is Satan good?

Student: No.

Professor: Where does Satan come from?

Student: From.. God.

Professor: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?

Student: Yes.

Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything. Correct?

Student: Yes.

Professor: So who created evil?

(Student didn’t answer)

Professor: Is there sickness? Immortality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?

Student: Yes, sir.

Professor: So, who created them?

(Student had no answer)

Professor: Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son.. have you ever seen God?

Student: No, sir.

Professor: Tell us if you have ever heard your God.

Student: No, sir.

Professor: Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God, for that matter?

Student: No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.

Professor: Yet you still believe in Him?

Student: Yes.

Professor: According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, Science says your God doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?

Student: Nothing. I only have my Faith.

Professor: Yes, Faith. And that is the problem Science has.

Student: Professor, is there such a thing as Heat?

Professor: Yes.

Student: And is there such a thing as Cold?

Professor: Yes.

Student: No, sir, there isn’t.

(The Lecture Theatre became very quiet with this turn of events)

Student: Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 Degrees below Zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of Heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.

(There was a pon-drop silence in the Lecture Theatre)

Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?

Professor: Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?

Student: You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have Low Light, Normal Light, Bright Light, Flashing Light… But if you have No Light constantly, you have nothing and it’s called Darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it is, You would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

Professor: So what is the point you are making, young man?

Student: Sir, my point is, your Philosophical Premise is flawed.

Professor: Flawed? Can you explain how?

Student: Sir, you are working on the Premise of Duality. You argue there is Life and then there is Death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Professor: If you are referring to the Natural Evolutionary Process, yes of course, I do.

Student: Have you ever observed Evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going)

Student: Since no one has ever observed the Process of Evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavour, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a Scientist but a Preacher?

(The class was in uproar)

Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?

(The class broke out into laughter)

Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? .. No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established Rules of Empirical, Stable and Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures?

(The room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable)

Professor: I guess you’ll have to take them on Faith, son.

Student: That is it, sir.. exactly! The link between man and God is Faith. That is all that keeps things alive and moving!

----------------------------------------------------
That student was Albert Einstein.
Brilliant.

[reblog: fashionchief on tumblr (times like this I wonder if I should convert)]

Fuck, man.

I want a pet. A loyal, loving pet.

There’s a movie called Hachi: A Dog’s Tale based on an original Japanese film. It’s about a Akita Inu who waits for his master at his train station every day. Even after his master passed away. I cried like a baby.  Go watch it. It’s based on the true story of a real dog.

Also, watch this, and cry like a baby:

Man…just—…man. This shit gets me.

Getting the last word.

It’s a wonderful feeling, to get the last word. Know you got to express what you wanted, and they don’t have the ability to continue the argument. Settle your score without the game continuing; really, getting the last word is ending the game.

One guy though, he got the last word in a game you can’t really win. A game against Death, the ultimate victor. He always wins. It sucks, but he does. He doesn’t even have to say anything to get the last word. He just ends everyone’s choice of having one. That’s life, I guess.

So I found this article on Thought Catalog on the front page and it’s a pretty surreal topic. This man from British Colombia wrote his own obituary before he died in preparation for when his terminal cancer—Death, really, in one of his most sadistic forms you’d have to admit—ultimately silences him.

So, with the pre-written statement, after he passed his family released it to Thought Catalog and it shows up in the front page. I read it once, and I have to admit, I wasn’t totally immersed in the nature of the story. Dead man writes from the dead. Interesting, yeah. I’ll give you a moment to read it, then I’ll give me two cents.

I always liked to think of Death as a personified presence, just because it’s cooler to think of intangible aspects of reality as tangible. Grim Reaper is a much sweeter thing to completely fear than a simple inevitable truth about the universe. No scythe, no cloak; no fun. This is quite a digression from the said article, but I think it’s interesting to think of this man facing Death with his faceless face (I guess), and taking advantage of what little he has left to flip the finger.

Maybe the intentions were much less hostile, but I think the respect I get from this technical writer writing about something the complete opposite of technical is that he had the mindset to take control of his life—when Death is dragging him slowly down, and make use of what he has left.

What he says in that ‘Last Post’ really isn’t for the readers, I believe. It’s first and foremost, for his family, and doubly as a confrontation against Death and his machinations. Epic? Yes. No doubt we all take for granted pretty much absolutely everything we own, do, have, think, and believe—and how many of us get to sit down and reminisce about it, lucidly, without Death leering over our shoulders telling us to give in, shut up, and come with him into oblivion?

Not a rhetorical question, I really do wonder it. I wonder if I’ll have that gracious opportunity. If Death is so kind to allow me to think and feel for everything I experienced before dragging me off with the blade of his scythe.

This guy? He slapped that scythe away. Because words, unlike body, are untouchable (not in a literal sense, I’ll admit). But his words came across before Death dragged him off—their meaning was immediate, their audience waiting to catch those words as soon as the body fell with Death.

He got the last word. He published it onto the Internet for others to see. And Death is reeling on his throne of bones and dust, grabbing at the Earth-realm with resent. The inescapable, intangible, fearsome presence of a universal force, and this man laughed silently to himself as Death swept him away. His loved ones looked on with hope and purpose. At that moment, nothing could stop the last play against Death’s game.

And you know what? He won. That’s why its a great story. He beat Death. He got the last word. Who doesn’t want to beat the quintessential unbeatable figure?

I may be being extremely existentialist, but whatever. I’m thinking as I’m writing. That’s what stimulated my brain with this article. Interesting—definitely heart-warming, uplifting and saddening when reading the Last Post, but it’s afterwards that I dig deep into some juicy thoughts that I start to have some fun.

I just cataloged my thoughts. How cute.

CiviliNation– Civil Digital Discourse

Everybody STOP what you’re doing!

Kay, not really. But if you want to learn about a new online movement that actually is really damn relevant to everyone who participates in the internet, look no further.

CiviliNation has a very specific goal; make sure the internet is a place free of abuse or harassment. Take away those bad things, and you have intelligent, thoughtful and educated discussion across the tubes of the interwebs.

For example, if you’re an aspiring internet personality posting on YouTube, fear not of haters if you support CiviliNation, because if it succeeds, the trolls will be bashed out. And all that’s left will be constructive criticism from invested commenters who want you to become a better performer. And better yet, there will be a lot more visible support because, well, there’s no haters to hate on you.

Imagine forums without troll posts or flame wars; it’d be like walking into a utopia of shiny threads lively with happy commenters and stimulating discussion. No grammar Nazis. No trolls. Clean and true.

Tough task? Yeah. But an organization like CiviliNation might be able to bring about some change that could spark a lot more constructive debate than what we’re so used to seeing spill into the internet. It is for everyone, after all. So why can’t everyone feel welcome?

It’s stopping cyber-bullying, it’s promoting legitimacy of online discussion, and it’s providing users with a hope that one day they can share whatever wonderful idea they’ve been keeping inside because of the fear that some jerk is going to pop in and say ‘lol u gay.’

And that’s just lame.

You can check it out at their website at www.civilination.org. Please do. Learn about this stuff. It’s nice to feel knowledgeable.

And you know me, I hate haters. So help out. Spread the word. Make the Internet more awesome.

REPOST: Shaken -- A Story for Haiti.

I wrote this a while back during the devastation of the Haiti earthquake. It was my way of feeling I was able to do something, even If I really couldn’t.

I just sat down and wrote. I was watching the news and the relief programs and seeing the photographs from the country and it bothered me, so I just wrote.

It remains, what I feel, as one of the best stories I’ve ever written.

In the essence of the current crisis of Japan, I’d like to bring it back, for you to read and maybe take something away from it. I hope you do.
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The first loud, enormous rumble was startling, to say the least. I was sitting in my home and listening to my music when I felt the walls and floor shift and move with so much force that I thought that the ground itself was going to collapse on me.

When it did, I did not know what to think. There was no thinking at that time. Just fear. Fear and confusion. A flash, and it was over. I only saw debris and metal and several people collapse through the building with me. I did not talk to these people who lived with me; I probably have never seen them before. But at the time I knew what they were feeling. I knew how scared they were and how they didn't know if they were going to live through this. I knew it all, because I felt the exact same thing.

I was scared. Everyone was. Everywhere. Fear.

As I hit the ground and dust and debris hit the ground around me, I covered myself with my arms and tucked my legs in. I did not scream or shout or yell. There was no time. There was everything around me falling apart, and me falling with it. I curled up and could do nothing but hope that I would not be crushed or impaled. I hoped I would survive. I hoped the people around me were okay.

They were not.

As the dust settled around me, all I could see was the brownish-gray concrete of the floors and walls of the building piled around me. I slowly stood up and could see above the endless ocean of debris. As I looked into the horizon, I did not know what to think.

I couldn't. I could only see and hear. Touch and smell. I saw destruction and devastation. Horror and chaos. I saw fear. I heard cries. Shouts and yelling. People calling for others. People calling for God. I smelled death. Blood and concrete. I felt the air against my skin. It made my spine crawl and my hair stand up. I felt the wet tears roll down my eyes. I blinked them and tried to wipe them from my face. But I couldn't. I was frozen. Unable to think.

The noise of the unthinkable chaos around me came back into my ears. The crying and shouting got louder, the smell got stronger, and I saw more devastation. Not in the distance, or on the street. I looked down around me and saw limbs and people buried under debris around me. I listened closer and heard muffled or faint cries; struggling voices. I could hear people dying. I did two or three full circles to figure out where any of the sounds were coming from. I tried to trace a voice to a face, or an arm, or a leg. The tears still came out of my eyes. I was struggling to see through them and I constantly wiped my face with my dusty arm. My eyes began stinging but I still tried to see through them, and hear them, and reach for them.

I made my way across the jagged surface of the fallen building. My sandals could not get a good grip on the slabs of concrete that lie below me. But as I walked further across the fallen building, I stepped on something soft. I looked down, through my stinging eyes and saw a small hand. I bent down and tried to look closer at it and I saw it twitch. There was no voice coming from this body buried under the rubble. There were only small pieces of debris that covered this person.

I grabbed this person's hand as hard as I could. This person grabbed back. The grip was weak, and beginning to get weaker. I needed to save this person. I released this person's hand and went around the arm and tried to remove the first slab. I hoped I was not crushing this person as I moved around to get the debris off. My grip on the concrete was not as good as I wanted it to be. My eyes were still stinging and I could feel something drip down my nose. I was feeling light-headed. Still, I bent down and tried to create any leverage I could to lift the slab concrete off of this person.

It was at least eighty kilograms and I kept trying to bend my legs and twist my back to get it off. I repositioned myself and tried to push it. My feet would slip as I pushed it harder, but I could feel it begin to fall off onto another slab of concrete, and a large cloud of dust filled the air around me as I heard a loud deafening boom as the slab hit the ground. I turned around and the slab was off of this person's arm. But the arm was not moving.

The hole was big enough for me to see through, and for someone to get out of. I looked inside of it.

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

I grabbed this person's hand and shook it. It was small, and there was a tiny bracelet that I hadn't noticed before made out of string. Tiny beads on it read out the name 'Miyole'. I felt for a pulse. It was faint. But it was there. I kept my two fingers on it.

Her soft, gentle pulse matched my pulsing, bumping heart as I sweat and panted.
I reached my other hand into the hole and searched for another part of this girl's body. I touched hair. Searched further. Reached downwards more. A shoulder. More. Another arm. I took my other hand under her arm and lifted her out of the debris.

She was not older than seven. I stared into her face; her eyes were closed and her mouth half open. Her hair was tied in braids and she tilted her head as I made my way off of the broken concrete and onto the ground. I carried her onto the street, or what was left of it.

Buildings, if I could call them that, were collapsed and compressed. Cars were crushed under larger slabs of concrete, some bigger than the ones from my building. More bodies. Some of them were whole. Some were not. I was frozen again. But I was broken away from it, as I could feel the warmth of this girl's body against my fast, beating heart.

I wanted to bring her somewhere safe. I knew that this was impossible.

But across the battered street where people ran back and forth, trying to find someone or something, I saw an intact car. I ran over to it and her limp arms hit against my body. I didn't want to touch them because I feared that they would be cold. But her body was warm against mine. I hoped it would stay that way.

The door was locked when I tried to open it with one arm, so I protected her with my body and kicked the window out. As I lay her down in the backseat and shut the door, I could hear the building in front of me creak and moan. I saw it sway.

And a second later I saw it fall.

I ducked under the car I had put the girl in and covered my eyes. They didn't sting anymore. I took my hands off my face and noticed blood on them. I rubbed the bottom of my nose. More blood. My light-headedness got stronger. As the dust settled once again around me, I stood up but couldn't regain my balance.

I stumbled for a bit, and I got dizzy for a moment. My vision returned, and I stared at another collapsed building. I stared down the street. It was all collapsed buildings. People continued to run up and down; around me, past me, through me. Somebody was carrying a child as they ran past. The child had no left leg. I did not think. There was no place for thinking.

More groans came from the the fallen building. People came from behind and gathered around me, trying to remove people from the debris. I was frozen again, but I felt my heart beating and went to assist them. As I helped a man throw a hundred pound piece of concrete off, another shock hit us.

The ground swayed and the people trying to help get the debris off fell or tripped. People on the streets hit the ground, either because they were running or they were scared. I looked back and the car with the girl inside it, and the wheels of it shifted back and forth.

Then someone yelled beside me, and another building beside us began to tilt towards where we were standing. More people yelled. More people ran. I scrambled to get on my feet and run for the street. I could feel a rushing wind from the building beginning to topple over behind me. I sensed it would hit soon so I jumped for the car the girl was in. The force of the other building falling on top of the this building's remains sent me flying over the car. I rolled onto the other side of it and felt a sharp pain in both my head and my arm.

I looked at it but I didn't see anything wrong. I ignored the pain and got up again. More dust. Through it, I saw a pile of rubble at least seven feet tall. I could still see limbs. I jumped over the car and ran towards the pile of debris. I lifted off everything I could and tried to grab any hands I could see. Someone was trying to pull me from the people. I shook his hand off my arm and continued to dig through the slabs to get to them.

"Hey! They're dead! We need help over there! Hey! Hey!"

I didn't listen to him. I wanted to see the rest of the people buried under here. I didn't want to see arms. I didn't want to see legs. I wanted to see faces. People. I wanted to see life.

The man grabbed me by the waist and pulled me back. I tried to grab those arms again but we both hit the ground and I struggled with him. He got a hold of me and pushed me against the door of the car.

"Let me save one more! Please! He's still alive! I can save him!"

I tried to squirm out of the man's grip against my neck but he didn't budge. I stared him right in the eyes as I yelled at the top of my lungs. He looked at me with stern eyes. I saw the badge on his breast pocket.

"You can't do anything more here. Please, go and help those you can."

I panted as I stared back at him. I could see his eyes are wet; even wetter than mine. He let go of his hold on me and I relaxed. He got up and ran further down the street and disappeared amongst the frantic crowd of people running every which way.

I used the car handle to pull myself up and went back around to the unlocked door. The girl was there and awake, but she was on the car's floor and she had curled herself up. Her face was as wet as mine, too. Her arms were shivering. My throat welled up and I attempted to say something, but I couldn't. I just extended my hand towards hers. She slowly came forwards and took it. I pulled her out of the car and took her hand as we stood in the street. It was still chaotic; there were more people carrying children and adults, husbands carrying wives, children looking for their parents. I could see and hear and smell and feel everything now. I stared down at the girl holding my hand. She looked around too. She was feeling the same thing I was feeling. She wiped her wet face with her arm; the same one I had grabbed and held on to and hoped would still be warm by the time I had gotten her out.

I bent down to her eye level and she looked at me.

"Where's my mom?" She asked with wide, brown eyes.

"I don't know, but we'll find her."

"I'm scared."

Her lower jaw began to quiver. I smiled lightly and hugged her has hard as I could.

"Don't be," I said. "Don't be scared."

"What do we do now?"

I looked at her face once more. It was so bright. So full of life. I put my palm on her cheek. It was warm.

I smiled again.

"We hope."

Batman was a cynic, and he’s pretty okay.

I mean ‘pretty okay’ in a more-than-generous sense.

If you’re tuned in with the world at all, and in this activism endorsement day in age, it’s really hard not to be, you’ve heard of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan causing a rather destructive tsunami and the death tolls in the thousands from earliest morning’s reports.

Within probably an hour, I’m guessing, the blogosphere and social networking sites acted simultaneously with major news outlets with spreading the word. Probably later, the floods of status update-condolences and call to online action began taking place. Activism really does spread like wildfire, which is a pretty neat comparison considering the nature of this disaster.

But anyways, personally I didn’t hear about it until I started reading the status updates on my Facebook news feed, because I woke up at noon today and didn’t turn on the television, because staying informed about the world is overrated. So you know, when I see all the compassionate and caring people posting their prayers I immediately felt like an uncultured and isolated jerk, not like anyone noticed. My feed kept growing with it all.

In actually analyzing my train-of-thought when it came to gaining more knowledge about this whole ordeal, it stuck me that there wasn’t really an emotional impact I was feeling with this whole thing. Did that scare me? Nah. Just made me wonder.

I checked lazily checked Wikipedia, and when I found out its magnitude, I was like, ‘Oh, wow that sucks’. And then I clicked on the related links and went to a list of largest and deadliest earthquakes in history. By that time my attention wasn’t on Japan’s crisis anymore.

I wondered if anyone else reacted like I did that I knew, and then it evolved into if everyone who posted those status update prayers were actually praying for those unfortunate Japanese? I mean, after seeing the response to the Haiti earthquake it dawned on me that there was some sort of marketing advantage that many famous people knew about.

Then again, it also dawned on me that I know nothing about the severity of Haiti’s earthquake, and only from what the news tells me, so I convince myself I don’t really have a place to say anything as a valid opinion.
--------------------------------------------
If there’s a point I’m trying to make—one I obviously haven’t yet—it’s that this kind of celebrity endorsement ‘trend’ you could even call it, the call to action that the actors, musicians, and famous people we look up to plead to use, and we take it proudly and give our donations with good intentions and full hearts—it’s spread down to us through social media, through online interconnectivity and cooperation, we all feel responsible, or even entitled, to display our awareness.

Maybe in fear of not seeming compassionate, maybe some redeeming quality of effect we get, maybe those who send out those prayers really are praying.

I may be making a case out of something greatly trivial. The fact that after seeing these status updates I don’t really fall into the idea that everyone actually cares as much as they say they do, and it’s been the same for me for a lot of disasters that have gained international attention.

To me, it’s all good taste and personal precaution, because we don’t want to seem like, or think we are, bad people. I don't think indifference means a bad person. Indifference is indifference. The whole ‘shit happens’ mantra.

But that’s just me. I hope those caught in it all try their best to make it out alive, and if they don’t I hope they go by quickly and painlessly, because that would suck if they don’t. I want to get away from the ‘pray for them / my wishes go out to them’ stock, greeting-card generalized statement. I don't think it seems earnest.

So, for those worrying about friends and family over there, I wont tell them to stop worrying, and that it’s going to be alright, because they probably thinking it’s not anyways. But you know, hope is the deepest consolation you can get from these kinds of things, at least that’s what we’re lead to believe.

To Japan, stay strong, stay brave, and maybe mother nature will have some mercy. I certainly hope so, because it hasn’t been friendly lately.

You’ve been through worse.

New blog buddy.

Seems like Blogger is dying, but I’m gonna be fighting the trend since I spent so much time making that damn banner, which I’ve been called out on by my brother as being really stupid.

I don’t have a conclusion to that statement.

In other news, I’m going to rep a blog because:

1. It’s worth reppin’.
2. It’s got some killer tunes you can treat you ears too while your browse the trippiest art ever.
3. She showcases the trippiest art ever.
4. If you do drugs, it's a really good idea for you to follow her.
5. If you don’t, it’s still a really good idea to follow her.
6. She has baller taste in music.
7. She’s just cool altogether, honestly.

Blog’s called L۞ST, run by a lonelyindian, and is a great find.

Look, Hipsters are taking over Webster.

Hipster definitions, or hipsterest definitions?

I’ve only read a few of these definitions of ‘words’ and all I can say is I don’t know what the hell is going on but the fact that whoever writes these doesn’t like the notion of using single adjectives to describe things.

‘Less is more’ is lost in the endless cesspool of vagueness and unclear meaning that are the definitions of these colloquials formed from the idea that words are only blocks of marble that we can form into whatever figure we want to represent our simply-stated emotions in the most complicated form.

^Sort of like that.

Cool blog though.

[Thanks, Ikea Junkie.]