Judas

Just as a note up-front, yes I know in my previous post I used greed twice and left out wrath. I'll fix it soon.
As for the content, I've been reading about some film-maker, who says that in all his films, he tries to keep out any antagonist, because he believes there is no one person who is completely responsible for a major conflict and his or her death is the sole solution to it. I know this is an opinion I have talked about before, but when I read that opinion, I started wondering about if other stories follow that principle. So far, none the literature I've read in school has proven to have a realistic antagonist, nor have many of the books and movies I read or watch for pleasure. The I thought about it in terms of the bible.
If you asked most christians who the antagonist of the bible was, the knee-jerk reaction is to respond satan. But since I don't believe in satan in the first place, and he isn't really an antagonist that can be over-come (As long as it holds true that no humans, be Jesus sides, are sinless). So, as far as the Christ story goes, most people consider Judas the big-bad guy. And since I can't think of anyone else like that, let's go with him.
In case you're not familiar with the story of Judas (Or are victim to the rumors about him, such as he used the first ever gun to kill himself), more or less his story goes like this: He was one of the disciples, starting with high hopes of the son of god crushing the evil romans underfoot. He became the sort of treasurer of the disciples and sometimes took more that his own share for himself. Later, when it became apparent Jesus  was not the expected military leader, he sold him out to the romans, and Jesus was crucified. Later, Judas killed himself out of remorse.
 Now, that is very different from the traditional antagonist story. For one thing, he seems to see Jesus as the sort of traditional hero, the one who fights people so evil they aren't really people, but monsters. For one thing, those kind of people don't exist, and Jesus sees that. So, after his vision is crushed, yes he sells Jesus out to the romans, and yes he gets payed for it. But now his vision is changed, seeing Jesus as the person who isn't a person.
But the thing is, the antagonist never has remorse in most stories. That's what separates the bible from books and movies, it has people who are really people, each one of them. Judas knows he did a wrong, and takes it out on himself.
If Judas had resisted his urge to commit suicide, would Jesus condemn him? Hurt him? At the very least lecture him? I say probably not, unless Jesus was some sort of hypocrite or else dying changed him a lot. Remember the story of the parodical son? Yes, this is a fair bit more than wasting your savings, but since Judas felt remorse more painful than any cross of torture Jesus suffered, Jesus would have welcomed him and save him, even if the Other disciples might  loath and despise him.
Speaking of which, have you ever wondered: what if Jesus has already come back, in some third world country or distant land. What if he's out there now with his own group of followers, waiting for us to hear.
 

7 deadly sins

I never really thought about the seven deadly sins much before, mostly because they have the word sin in the name, which is a word I never really like, mostly because whenever people use it, they're talking about why someone's going to hell. I've thought about it a bit more, and although it's a very imperfect philosophy (There are a lot more than seven reasons people do bad things), it gives a different way of thinking why people do bad things. And I'm going to do a series of posts about each one of them. But for now, I'll take a break from religious or philosophical posting and do something about my theory of how the seven deadly sins relate to different hogwarts teachers from Harry Potter. If you haven't read the books or don't like the books, please just stop reading here.

Note: Yes, I know Slughorn was potions teacher and Snape was defense against dark arts the sixth year, not the seventh. But, think about it. If J.K. Rowling intended each defense teacher to carry a deadly sin, it wouldn't bee the real defense teacher in the seventh book, who is mentioned and then forgotten.

Year 1, Qurall, greed: This argument is the weakest because  Qurall is one of the least developed characters, or rather, his actual personality is undeveloped, and his pathetic stuttering personality is not really him. The only part that he actually shows his true colors is in the climax, where he says (Quote approximated) "There is no good or evil, just power and those who are too weak to use it". He was power hungry, so he represented greed.

Year 2, Lockheart, pride: Simply the fact that he gave a quiz about himself to his students shows how vain he is. Throughout the year his class degrades into lectures about stuff he did.

Year 3, Lupin, sloth: I'll be honest, I did the other ones first so I could eliminate all the options but one, which had to be Lupin. Lupin seems like such a good person (Except for at night when he turns into a murder-crazed wolf. So I eliminated all the other and the final choice surprised me,  sloth. I suppose he was a sloth, he foolishly ignored the danger of his condition and taught at school of children he could easily accidently maim, kill, or infect with one hiccup on snape's part.

Year 4, moody, lust: I don't really know what lust is. Mostly when people thinks about it, it is thought to be lusting over someone whom you are physically attracted to, but the way I can see it, some people can lust for power or money as  much as they can a person, so this is what Moody, who is actually Bardy Crouch junior lusts for, revenge. Revenge against his father he wanted so badly that it was all that consumed him. Revenge for abandoning him and and betraying him. Revenge for being less a human and more a machine. Revenge for sentencing his own son to a punishment worse than death.

Year 5, Umbridge, greed: In this it is not Umbridge herself that is greedy. Umbridge is just a puppet of whoever is in power at the time, as long as she is at the top. No, the greed that I'm talking about is the greed of her puppeteer, Cornilias Fudge, minister of magic. You see, he is greedy because he has become minister of magic and, as is the human impulse, now that he is at the top, he is trying to keep that position. Although it would take a remarkable politician to let go of the feeling of wanting to be on top, Fudge keeps his position by using torture and fear to keep students from telling people about the impending crisis with Voldemort which fudge would be fired for if he was blamed for it.

Year six, slughorn, gluttony: This one is easy, Slughorn lets himself be bribed into telling Tom Riddle about a deadly secret that he knows is dangerous for a small treat. He also indulges himself with surrounding himself with talented students in order to do them a favor, and when they make it, reap the rewards.

Year seven, Snape, Envy: Snape is shaped by his envy of James Potter. That much you can tell by the seventh book. He sees Lily as a great person foolishly thrown away to the arrogant and talentless James Potter. He wishes that he were James Potter and he was with Lily. He only helps Harry because, even after Lily's death, he envisions himself with her and thinks she will thank him in the afterlife.

facebook religion

I know this is a small topic after writing about suicide, but have you ever gone on facebook and seen all the things where doctors will give cute/heroic people free operations if their posts or pictures get a certain number of likes or shares. What doctor would actually be evil enough to say, "Your boy who took a bullet for his little sister needs a heart transplant, but I'll give it to you free... if his picture gets 1000 likes on facebook! Bwahahahahaha!" But what gets on my nerves even more is facebook religion.
It's not like I expect deep philosophical discussion on facebook, but almost every post that is about religion is threatening non-believers.
If you read my blog on a regular basis, you know that I don't believe in hell in the afterlife, so this probably affects my view point, but I think it is completely unfair for god to condemn you on the day of judgement for not sharing a post. I actually talked to someone about his religion posts and his answer was "Well, I do agree it is a bit extreme, but think about it, there is so much other stuff on the internet, I might as add some religion in there."This leads me to believe that these people who put it up aren't actually believing it themselves, but just want to "Show god who's side they're on". In other words, they want a cushion in case somewhere in the afterlife they have to prove they were a good christian. Or maybe they really  believe it. Not to say there's no good religion on facebook. Just a few weeks ago I saw a post about why christians should be pro-gay.  

Suicide.

I'm sorry that I haven't posted in awhile. I was waiting for something big to happen that I could post about, and now that it has come, I wish it had never happened.
I heard that a friend of mine from second grade hanged himself this week.
I know it is much easier for you to have someone you don't know that well to die than someone you know very well. But the down side is my friend, who I hadn't seen in six years, only appears in small places in my memory. And he's never moping around or acting depressed. He's always smiling and laughing or making a joke or sining a silly song about "Different countries of the americas" Most people would instantly assume he changed in those six years, but I've seen photos of him, obviously not. In the pictures, he's smiling the way you can't fake.
And yet he killed himself.
I don't know the whole story, only he was angry so he stormed up to his room, tied the knot, and did it. But something else must have been going on who he was angry at is undoubtedly not to blame. Something was eating away at him. I fell like if I could just have five minutes alone talking to him before he did it I could have stopped it. Whenever something bad happens, I always think about it from what I could do if I was there before it happened.
I don't really know where I'm going with this. It just helps me to think about it when I type. The only real insight I can provide is it is the human impulse to feel sad and guilty when someone is dead. But if I could talk to his ghost I assure you, he would want to be remembered not by weeping, but by "Different countries".

Different religions

I'm officially off hiatus now.
To start it off, I want to talk about a book I've been reading. It's called The Life of Pi, and most people would say it's about a boy stuck on a life-boat with a tiger, which it mostly is. But the first part is all about religion.
The protagonist, Piscine Patel is a boy growing up in India who is rather undecided about religion. He gets into his native Hinduism, but later in life he meets a priest who introduces him to christianity, a baker who tells him about the muslim faith, and even his science teacher who tries to convince him there is no god.
He actually takes all the teachings to heart, except the atheist science teacher (Although he still considers him a big figure in his life).
The thing is, each figure who introduces him to the religion is completely ignorant of the two others. One day, all three of them corner his parents asking them about him. His parents believe him an atheist and were unaware that he subscribed to any religion. But the result is a heated debate between his three religious figure and his parents utterly confused how you can worship three religions and consider them all true, and Pi stuck with the image of his the priests fighting each other with angry, fiery words, each condemning the others religion as foolish and stupid.
I think I can understand what Pi is getting at. He saw what you are supposed to see in religion, love and theories. If there really is a god or multiple gods for each religion as  Pi believes, why should they be mad at each other? Because they wouldn't be. If god or the gods are really immortal and forgiving, then why would they condemn others? Because they don't. What causes the anger and angry debates are the people.

Spanish 1A

A few years ago, I went to a small public school, which encountered a fair amount of problems. One of them is no spanish teacher ever stayed for more than a year. They left for a variety of reasons, but not one stayed for more than a year until I left the private school for a public middle school middle school.
The thing with the spanish teachers is each one, though talented at having us memorize words, not one of them taught building on what the previous one had taught. That meant that each summer each student in my class would forget what happened the previous year, and, with no re-enforcement, only new words which were tested then forgotten, the end result was a lot of studying, but nothing stuck.
The end result was, in middle school, which I came in to a year after the language programs had started, I was put into spanish 1A, which was basically a class for students who had failed spanish the last year and had to take it.
The kids in the class all look really seedy and mean, like criminals before they had a chance to drop out of high school. This is an over exaggeration, there are three kids in that class who are really smart, but that is what most of the students seemed like.
On he third day I walked in with a shirt from dartmouth, which is an ivy league school.
"What's that shirt form?" asked one of the students.
"Dartmouth, it's a college," I responded.
"Wow. Are you going to go to college after high school?"
"Yeah, aren't you?"
"Of course not!" the student seemed to find the idea appalling.
I kind of dread going to this class every other day, but I think it is good for me, in a way. Going to a private school has reminded me that not everyone is concerned with their education and really wants to reach their full potential. As you heard me say in one of my previous posts, I think that whether or not you an intellectual individual depends on what your parents show you is important in life. My parents, luckily, are both teachers, so I am set on getting a good education, but I have to remind myself that not everyone is so fortunate. Plenty of people have parents (Or other influences, such as piers) who don't care about them, or give them bad advice.
Oddly enough, after that class I have enriched language arts,  the two seem to be exact opposites. Language arts is about thinking, spanish is about memorizing, enriched means the best students, spanish 1A mainly has the slackers.

9/11

First off, sorry about all the posts in which I say I've got nothing to say. I'm going to stop doing those, so sorry.

Now, I know that the ten year anniversary to 9/11 is tomorrow, but I feel like I need to write it all down now and post it, because if wait until tomorrow I might have forgotten some of my ideas.

Sometimes I read books or watch movies that mention New York before the disaster, and I am struck by the fact of how they show the twin towers as a fact. Its existence is not questioned, and if you went up to someone the morning of September 11, 2001 and said that someone would blow up the twin towers, they would either laugh or think you are crazy. They do not question that it is there today and will be there tomorrow. I guess all people think about things like that. But its not the Towers that were the big loss. I mean, sure, it was great to have the world trade center in our own country, but we could do without it. What really struck us hard is the people.

We never expected that people could just be killed in such large numbers. I mean, wars can wipe out far more people than that, but wars have happened before. Disease can wipe out more people as well, but disease has happened before too. What hasn't happened is just all of a sudden an airplane crashes into a major landmark of a huge city. That really took people off guard.

If you walked up to any American and asked "Do you think if hell exists the suicide pilots of September 11 belong there?" I would say you would get almost none who say no. 

But I say no.

I say no because they thought they were doing the right thing. They thought their god would reward them. They thought it was the right thing to do. So yes, they were wrong, and their mistake cost us thousands of lives, but they thought with all their heart (If they didn't they wouldn't have killed themselves) that this was the right thing to do. It scarred out nation and will for years to come, but I would forgive any of them. ANd if you disagree with me to a point of extreme anger, I will remove this post immediately.  

100th post spectacular

As you might be able to tell, I do posts about big issues on every big major mark (I posted about gays and lesbians on number 50) and this time it is the old testament.
It all started when I looked up Mark Osler (I was wondering what else he did) And came across this article about gays and lesbians at Baylor, and how they feel scared about being found out and kicked out. It is an excellent article, and if you want to read it I will put up  a link for it, but one of the comments really appalled me. It was by a guy called doc Joseph. It one part goes:
"That Old Testament, which Christians would like to edit to remove the "bad parts" or explain away with platitudes ("It was a different time...") still tells you what God, the Hebrews, AND Jesus thought about homosexuals."
Sorry, but for the rest of the post the text is stuck like this. 
Obviously this guy believes in a completely serious interpretation of the old testament. He says that christians "Like to cut out the bad parts" which is, in fact, exactly what I do. And I would agree with him, if I had not read one book.
It is about greek myths.
If you compare the old testament and Greek myths, they are surprisingly similar. I can't quote one part of it to show the similarities, but the way it is told, like a history, is really similar. And not just that. In both books, the gods (Or god) take sides of certain people and slay their enemies. How can this be, if one is supposedly all fact and the other fiction?
Simply because that is the way people interpreted life back then. They couldn't think about what made the great things of the universe, so they had god do it. And the world they lived in was violent, so the creator must be like that too. And wouldn't it be good if this creator(s) was on their side and used the violence on others?
You see? they made it up the exact same way.
The thing is, Jesus said that the Hebrew religion was right, so would he lie to us like that?
No. 
So god must exist, and do some of the same things as i the old testament, but the people changed it to meet their needs (Make them feel like god was on their side) Until certain parts weren't even his any more.
As for cutting stuff out, it's not like the stuff I choose not to believe is about love or acceptance or anything that would make the world better. It is about a vengeful god killing people. In fact, the reason that christianity succeeded to become the worlds most popular religion (That fact comes from my sunday school teachers) is because it isn't about an angry god, but rather teachings that help us be better people. 
Of course, this isn't condemning other religions (Other than greek mythology) as worshipping an evil god. In fact many of the people who practice other religions (Muslim, Judaism, Hinduism) are actually very nice people. Those people have seen things similar to Jesus' teachings of love and peace, and are attracted to them. And if anyone fro another religion is offended by this post, lease comment. I will remove the post immediately after I read the comment.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-osler/gay-christian-students-baylor-university_b_941141.html

Hypocritical

Originally this was going to be a post apologizing for the decreasing amount of content in my posts. But then I realized that, seeing as this has no content itself, I think that would be very hypocritical.
But what the heck, I'll do it anyways.

Exposure

Sorry its too late to do a serious post today, but I will provide at least a tidbit of content.
It's kind of weird, a few years ago to get a book published you had to go through a whole long process. Now you can publish a book on the kindle for free and no editing required.
See what I meant by a tidbit?

Stats

It's kind of weird, I don't do this anymore, but I used to obsessively compulsively check my stats. I don't know why I did this. Who should I care how many people read my blog? It's not like I'm getting paid or rewarded in any way by who reads my blog. Heck, I don't even really have to blog at all. But I still felt an intense happiness when when my stats were up, and a sudden disappointment when they were down.
So why did I rely on how many people were reading it? the same reason that people post links to their own work when reading other peoples stuff on the internet. Because they want exposure.
Not to long ago, if you could do something really well, short of doing it in the street in front of a crowd, you would need some organization to show it off. Say you can review books really well. You would need to work hard to get it in a magazine or other form of distribution. Now, you just type it up, put it on a blog or other website. Instant exposure to tons of people.
The only problem is, you need to get people to see it. If you get people to see it, they might like it and you might be a world famous reviewer. Of course, I do not expect my blog to get really big, but I still cared about exposure.
Now, I realize it doesn't really matter how many people read it. What matters is I like writing and so I blog.
Not that I'm complaining I don't get enough views.  

I'm sick

This morning I was sitting on the couch, and I guess the white blood cells must have given up or something, because all of a sudden I was sick, just like that.
It's weird, but why do we get sick? What is the point of sitting on the couch feeling awful with your head pounding and your heart-rate way up? How does that help anything?
I know this sounds like the constant question, why does god let murders happen, or why does god let people go broke, and stuff like that, but there is a difference. Humans created the guns that cause people (Some) to be murdered and are the murderers themselves, people create the money that people lose. I'm not saying that money itself is evil and that humans should never have created it (Although I am saying that about guns), but there is a difference. In those two instances, it is a human action, not a metaphysical action, that caused pain. But disease is a natural thing, so why did god create it in the first place?
The obvious answer is to keep the population in check, but what kind of god who loves all his people would allow them to be thinned out just for the sake of preservation. Why not make us not have too many kids?
Because that would be too easy.  it is part of the human condition that we need suffering and pain and even death to truly understand things. We can't all have it given to us on a silver platter. If we were never been given problems to overcome, what is the point of living. What fun would it be to watch a movie in which nothing ever went wrong? it is the same with life. And disease is an opponent we can never kill. Sure, we can hand out vaccines and have all the medical attention we want, but disease keeps mutating to penetrate our defenses.
I'm not saying here is anything good or fun about death and pain, but it is a reminder that we are all mortal, and no matter how far we advance, we will have to keep facing the same old nemesis.

Running out

It's kind of weird, when I started this blog, I had lots of ideas for posts. However, a few months in now I'm kind of running out. of ideas. Don't worry, I'm not stopping the blog, but I may continue my hiatus may continue while I attempt to regenerate ideas.

I will follow you into the dark

As many of you know, I will follow you into the dark is a song by Deathcab for Cutie, a band which I saw in concert last night. One of my favorite songs by them is I will follow you into the dark. At first, it sounded the lyrics sounded weird, almost suicidal. But then my father rand brother explained to me that it is not about guy who will kill himself, but rather someone who is dying at the same time as his wife, and wants t be when her when she dies.
I saw the music video a few minutes ago, and I liked it. It showed the lead singer living his daily life while there was a hole in his one room apartment that was growing larger and larger, until he finally falls in. The end he is standing in the hole with just the top of his head sticking out from the pit, and he walks in through the hole to somewhere else.
I assume the hole represents a cause of death, like a growing disease, which eventually consumes him. The thing that struck me as odd is that he didn't try to pull himself out, he just walked on through to the afterlife.
When I asked my brother about this, he said that he simply wouldn't be able to pull himself back up, but I'm not so sure. I think they made the hole purposely within reach of his escape, but he chose  not to. Why?
I think it is best t this point to quote J.K. Rowleing from her 6th book (Quote approximated): "People do not fear death, but the unknown."
Dumbldore said that, and as most know, he is about 150 years old. I can link this back to a quote from my mom "sometimes old people who know they re about to die re fine with it. They don't fight it. It is their time."
Since I am young, I can't imagine being just "Ready to go". If I were dying of cancer or something, I would cry and scream and be miserable the last days of my life. what if there is no afterlife? What if I just go out, like a candle?
But nevertheless, some old people feel lie it is their time to go, no matter what  the end brings. Besides, people who have died and then had their heart re-started say that, while dead, they were still expeirienceing something. I wonder what it would fell like.

Sorry for not doing serious posts for a while

I just haven't had the time.

Colleges

I heard somewhere that there are colleges some where that won't admit gay students and put all kinds of pressure on the students not to illegally marry each other. They won't let the students of the opposite gender in the same dorms as each other and, well, yeah. You get the picture.
Other than the anti-gay marriage rule, all of the rules seem reasonable At least, there is some good intent for the student behind it. Having a baby in college is generally not a good thing. However, I wonder what would happen if they said, "You know what, do it if you like. Having a baby with you is fine." And put all the work and energy funneled into the old rules into learning, which is generally what you go to college to do.
 It makes you think, if an approach like that could (Possibly work in a school) then why not in a government? WHy not stop the wars in the middle east and put the effort into getting out of things like the debt that takes up more than 1/60th of all the money in the world. Thats more money than any individual could ever hope for. It's more than many countries have put to together. So why not forget killing people in far away countries and focus on helping the people of our own.
My dad told me that you can't just back out of war like that, but why not? Is it against some unwritten law that the opposing country needs to be battered into submission before any peace is reached?

writing

it's odd, but a few centuries ago (Not very long in the grand scheme of things) It was very, very hard to get anything you wrote in print and read by people. Today, I can write this blog post and someone across the world could read it, if they wanted to.

I have decided it is best to take advantage of this and make a book for the kindle (Which there is no age limit for. You can be as young as you want and it will still be published). It's going to be fiction, because if I tried writing a whole book about theology or something like that, I would end up with at least 50% filler.

FIller is an odd thing. In speaking it's words like "Uuuh" and "Yeah" and other random grunts. In cooking it's random stuff that you don't want to know where it came from. And in writing it is a sentence, paragraph, or even entire chapter of pointlessness. The thing that all three fillers have in common is they are useless and are used to take up time and space.

If I had to something about what I thought about a certain (Theological) aspect, it would be relatively easy, depending on the subject. But if I had to write a whole book, forget about it. I just can't generate enough thought.

 That's what's great about fiction, none of it has to be real. Sure, a bit of fact here and there is expected, even required, but you can make up anything you want from your own head and make it reality in your story, although I should try to keep it from being too far-fetched, probably.

Escape

A few months back I went to a role playing game store. I had a good time there because I was into a certain game they sold there. When I asked my mom what she thought of it, her response was this:
"I didn't like it. It was so dark in there. And some of the people, it seemed as if the game is the main focus of their life now."
She had a point. A lot of the people there looked obese or otherwise unhappy with their physical appearance. It seemed as if other people might pick on them. I could understand that they might want to escape from their real life into a land of dragons and magic that only exists in their own mind.
I remember when I first moved to Austin I liked to escape into memories of the time before we moved. In the summer, or later on saturdays when I had little to nothing going on it seemed tempting  just to live in memories of a year ago. Many people similarly try to escape into somewhere else, whether it is to the internet or another time period.  
As Osler pointed out, Jesus escaped to, and always came back. He escaped for the right reason, not to envision himself in somewhere else, but to  be productive, and do, as my youth minister calls it, Jesus stuff.
I wonder sometimes if it is possible for anyone less than the son of god to escape, and enjoy it, without forgetting the real world around them.  

The metaphor of body parts

Lately, I haven't been posting because I have been reading my last two posts and thinking "Man, this sucks". I figured I was going to have to stop posting for good because I was out of ideas. However, I'm stopping the hiatus and starting up again.
A friend of my brother's mom broke her ankle. The same thing happened to my toe last winter and my dad's ankle this spring. And I can tell you for sure, when my toe was broken, my thoughts were most definently not "I sure am glad my arm is okay". And a few years back when I broke my arm I wasn't thinking "At least nothing is wrong with my toe".
They explain all this in a bible verse that goes something like (Quote approximated) "A body needs all pars to function. If all parts were eyes, they couldn't hear and if all parts were ears, were would you see? So eyes must not say 'I am not an ear, so I am not needed' and ears must not say 'I am not an eye, so I am to needed" When one part is hurting, all hurt, and when one part is rejoicing, all rejoice. That is how it must be with the church".
 That was a speech by Jesus, or at least a part of it.
I can see where he's going with it. It works with families and communities, if someone is hurting, others focus on the hurting one. In short they take the others for granted. But still Jesus doesn't scold us for taking them for granted. He says that all of us are useful and all of us matter. Take into account that if Jesus came for all of us (Which his teachings make pretty clear that he did) then imagine all 6.6 billion of us. Assuming Jesus is speaking to all people (Including people of the future) then that means that we should fell everyones pain. That seems pretty hard considering that every few seconds someone dies.
To me, once I think about it, it seems almost like a challenge. Make the population of the world so every time someone hurts someone, not everyone but someone, hurts with them. And every time someone celebrates, someone must celebrate with them. And if no one had to mourn or celebrate alone, then the world would be a much better place.
I know, he said he was referring to the church. But many of the things Jesus said about the church can apply very well to the entire population.

I said in one of my previous posts that "In the long run, all people are ADHD".  I've been thinking about it, and I have decided it really is true.

I remember hearing about the earthquake in Haiti and the one in japan. Things are still bad in Haiti and Japan, but no one is talking about it. Why We were all taken off guard by the sudden deaths of thousands of people, but our minds are long term, ADHD. We don't focus on one thing that long. We get bored. But things are still really bad, we just forgot about it.

jg

Stories

Sorry about my extended break from blogging, and unfortunately it will be continued for another week or so. My cousins are coming (Leaving little to no time for blogging) and then we are heading to canada for a trip to our cabin.

One thing I have observed is that lots of time when there is a really good book/movie/tv show or any other kind of story, the people that like it most seem to have a habit of trying to rewrite, extend, or otherwise change the story. I have a theory that is probably completely false and can be easily disproved by anyone with the vaguest of vague understanding of the human mind.

Basically, we all have a story held somewhere with in our subconscious, which is something like our life with more of whatever genre we like in it. We can try,but we can never get the whole thing. Whenever a story gets close, we get excited and try to alter it to be more like our own story. We switch the protagonist with ourselves, the  antagonist with someone we hate, and the supporting characters with our closest friends. Then when someone tries to read it and doesn't like it, because they have a different story, and theirs has different protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters. It is an odd mixture of two people's ideas. This makes sense with movies that were based off of books, because it is a fan of the books changing everything. That is why a movie close to the books works. Often when someone it my class says they wrote it a story, it is another story changed to their needs.

I have often tried to write down my story, but to no avail. My life keeps changing, and my story along with it. Before I can get down a hundred pages the story I want to write has been washed away from my memory.

Individual intelectuals

I was having a conversation with my brother over dinner (Our parents were out, so it was just me and him) and I said that no one really reads the paper anymore. Most people get their news online. Despite the fact that it is more environmentally friendly, I still feel like the internet has one big problem, anyone can comment. With a paper, sure you can send in an editorial, but they don't run every editorial, especially if it has three swears a sentence like many comments do (Luckily, few comments are longer than a sentence). Plus you have to go through the trouble of sending it in (Or emailing it) while with a comment, it takes you ten seconds to type a short one.
Anyways, my brother said I was wrong because he reads the newspaper every day. I always thought it would be cool to read the newspaper everyday, a nice little skill you could have. To make sure my brother didn't start bragging, I told him he was an intellectual, so he didn't count. But what makes someone an individual intellectual (I don't really there can be an intellectual who isn't an individual).
I have thought about this  a lot and have come to the conclusion that the thing that makes someone an intellectual is whether or not you parents are smart. This is not saying that you somehow inherit the "Smart" gene, or that you succeed because your parents are smart, and therefore rich (Plenty of upper class people aren't smart and plenty of middle class or lower class people are), but because your parents influence your childhood, teaching you what is important. For me, for example, intelligence is valued in my family. In other families sports or other things are high priorities. Your parent's/guardian's priorities encourage you in certain areas and so you succeed in those areas.
As far as being an individual, it really depends on whether you are or aren't afraid of too much negative attention. Conformity is, all in all, caused by fear.

Music

My brother and father are planning on going to a fleet foxes concert, which frankly annoys me. Not that there is anything wrong in general with their music, but I have always felt like listening to it was like listening to a church choir, which, despite my religious beliefs, I have always had a dislike for. So the fact that you would pay to listen to that is, in my opinion, weird. I'm glad I'm not going.

Pretty much I just like bands that are or sound similar to U2. 

I have wondered a lot, what if everybody had different tastes, but everybody perceived it differently. For example, let's say everybody's favorite color is green, but their eye perceive it different, so to them, green things look blue, for example. Everyone calls the sky blue, so, even though they think the sky is green, they call it blue because they think that is what the word for green is. So they say their favorite color is blue. It could work the same way with taste in food, music, and art. 

Obviously, if I spend my time thinking about this I have too much free time on my hands.

Sacrifice

Last night I had an interesting and sad dream. There was a boy my age who was going to be executed because of something his parents did (Obviously my subconscious does not abide by the United States government) unless I stepped in and offered my own life for the life of this stranger. I asked someone if it were possible for me to take his place. The answer was that it was. I had just opened my mouth to say I would take his place, when I realized I just couldn't do it. I walked away and let him get killed. It was such a relief to wake up and realized I hadn't been responsible for a innocent person's life. 

But a sickness crept into my stomach as I realized I hadn't wanted to sacrifice my life for his because he would live. It was the image in my mind of god clapping me on the back and saying "Job well done", or something along those lines. And the last few minutes of my dream were me hanging out with friends while being scared out of my wits of what my afterlife would be like when I did die, basically exactly what was described in Dante`'s Inferno.

What scares me most is not that I would willingly give up a persons life just so I could live. It is that the only reason I would sacrifice my life just to get into heaven. That is the same logic that the suicide bombers used (That they would be in paradise as soon as they crashed into the twin towers), and it is disturbing that I would use it in  my own mind.

That is what made Jesus' sacrifice so incredible. He was not doing it for a better afterlife or to save his kids or his wife (Though it would still be noble if he did it for the last two). He did it because, well, I don't know exactly. The response "To save us from our sins" seems to lack any detail, and everyone I ask gives different answers. But he did it for no personal gain or love towards an individual. he did it out of love towards everybody, that much is clear. And who knows, maybe my dream is trying to tell me something, so I had to take the actions I did.

  

Malice

I was riding my bike along when I saw a sign that said "For sale by owner". Right by the word "For" it said "Toys", which was underlined twice and written in sharpie, so the sign read "Toys for sale by owner". As soon as I saw it, my mind got on a train of thought. I was wondering if he had old lego technic sets (Some sell for several hundred dollars on ebay) when I realized that this seemed suspiciously like some kind of prank. I could just imagine me going on the phone with the number underneath the "For sale by owner sign" and looking like a complete idiot.

You have to live in extremely sheltered living to avoid malice. It comes from people that lick all the chocolate bars when still in their wrappers at star-bucks or push you out the door with a censor before you have paid for the item and gotten the magnetic strip removed, or at least threaten to do that. So why do they do that? Do they take inherit joy from that or is there something encoded in their brain that makes them evil like that by nature?

My conclusion is that when they aren't doing stupid, mean stuff, they are really desperate for friendship or at least someone that doesn't hate them. They do the maliceful stuff in fits of thoughtlessness. So as long as you don't call the number, wipe the chocolate bars off, or  cling onto a bookshelf before he can push you out the door, you'll be okay. 

Villians

It is odd, but I can not think of many stories at all that do not have some kind of villains. Seriously, there are hundreds of embodiments of evil in movies, TV shows, and books. Most are murderers. Most are self-serving, and almost all are killed in the end.
I don't know why, but I find it annoying that stories are thought of as original when they have an antagonist that act exactly like this. Of course, if I ever write a novel, the antagonist will almost definently fit this stereotype. Still, it makes me wonder how generation after generation (Because this idea of the villain is not by any means new) get by after having stories broadcasted this way. I guess at least a good amount of people know enough to separate fact from fiction.  

Nostalgia

I saw an commercial or the new Winnie the Pooh movie, and to be honest, I can't think of a single movie this year that has been animated without computer animation besides Winnie the Pooh. At first it stumped me, why take the risk that people will judge your movie poorly and therefore not see it based on the animation technology from the commercials. But then I realized, it isn't aimed towards children at all, it is aimed towards 50-year olds who want to remember their childhood, which included different animation.
In one way or another, almost everyone will want to remember being young. I sure do. The big thing that I remember from my childhood was Bionicle. In case you don't know, Bionicle is a line of action figures put out by the Lego corporation that has been recently discontinued. When it was discontinued, I was crestfallen, and the thing that replaced it, Hero Factory is pretty much one big cliche. But the more I think about it, the more Bionicle wasn't much better. In fact, by the end, the story was confusing and downright stupid.
But the reason I like to remember Bionicles is because when I discovered them, it was a time when a cliche didn't exist in my world (I was 3 at the time). Everything was new and interesting, and anything seemed possible. My world was small and full of mysteries. Now I know the world is a lot bigger and I have the attention span to answer or at least guess at those mysteries.
I guess the same thing goes for Winnie the Pooh. I can imagine my mom or dad 43 years ago watching Hephelumps and Weasels march across the screen.
Frankly, I think it is a genius idea. when the rest of the world is transfixed watching a noseless guy kill people with green lightning, there is a group remembering their childhood. And if anyone ever makes a bionicle movie, I can tell you I will be at the theater the opening day.

faith without works is dead

I have had many conversations with my youth minister. One of the ones I remember most is works vs. faith.
My youth minister says they are both equal, and I can see how that could work. Faith causes works, and works support faith. It would make sense if that was how they worked, all equal, but the more I think about it, the more it doesn't seem to make sense at all.
If they were both equal, it would mean that a christian that went to church weekly and was deeply religious and prayed every night and never faltered in belief, would be at least half right, but if that was true, then Mohandas K. Gahndi would be half wrong, even though he did great and followed many Christian ideas, even though he wasn't christian.
 The way that I see it (And remember, this is all completely hypothetical), if you are perfect in faith but do no works, it would be a net loss for the good of everyone. But if you are perfect in faith but have no faith or a faith other than christianity, then what you do is a net gain for the good of everyone, despite the fact that one more seat was empty during church.
It says in the bible, "If you have faith enough to move mountains, but do not love, you are nothing." Love as I understand it, love is root of all true good works, and it can come from a Hindu, Atheist, Muslim, Jew, or even a cult member. So even if it is a bit uneven, I think works overrule faith in most cases.

24

I heard about that show. Supposedly, each show is one hour and each season is 24 episodes long. I wonder what it would be like in real life.

2-3 o'clock: sleeping
6-7 o'clock: newspaper reading and yogurt eating
8-9 o'clock: traffic jam


See what I mean?

Missinterpretations

I remember being at school a few days after the first Iron Man movie came out. Now, if you have seen Iron Man, you would know it is the only marvel movie I have ever seen that has a theme that is not a complete cliche (See, I finally learned how to spell that word).
Basically, it is against military action. In fact, the main antagonist was a weapons producer. However, the week after it came out I over heard someone saying the the movie demands more military action in the middle east.
That kid did something really common, he took something great and channeled it to meet his own means (The kid was a Hyper- Conservative). I will admit, I have done similar things. But have you ever considered that we have misinterpreted the personality of Jesus?
Have you ever considered he may have a sense of humor? Many people don't. I mean, he was doing important things like healing people or preaching the word of god. In fact, he was gods son, so why shouldn't he be above human emotions?
Because that is what made him special. He was both god and human, so why  not have a sense of humor? Personally, I think Jesus would be a bit boring if he didn't have one.
So when did he ever crack a joke? I can think of one example. Once Jesus said to Peter "You are the rock on which my church is built". But when you think about it, Peter was the least stable of the disciples, and the least rock-like, so to speak. Maybe we misinterpreted his words as a serious sentence, maybe he is light-heartedly making fun of Peter. Of course, it is bad to make fun of someone at a large extent, but if Jesus could walk on water and heal dead people, I doubt he wouldn't be able to make fun of someone without hurting their feelings.

Newspapers, Vampires, and America

Last year, around valentines day I read in the paper a whole article about the founding fathers being vampires.
Of course, it was a joke, and a funny one at that. I cracked up when I read it. Unfortunently, some other people had different views. That day the newspaper company was swamped with angry letters and editorials complaining. The next day a retraction was printed.
But the worst part (Other than the genius who wrote it getting in trouble) was that they thought that it was a heresy to write this.
I'm more than fine with respecting, learn about, and admiring the people who founded this country, but the people who wrote the angry letters seemed to treat the founding fathers as gods, and not only that, linking them to the god from abrahamic religions.
 That seems wrong in many ways. For one thing, Jesus had been born, raised, persecuted, killed, resurrected, and had ascended more than a thousand years before europeans even started coming to this country, much less colonizing it and creating a country from those colonies. Its not that I think god is unhappy or apathetic about the U.S., but I also don't think that it is more holy than any other country, and it is unfair to say to other countries that the founding fathers are up in gods right hand (In fact, they weren't even Christian! They believed god came down, made everything, and then left us to do what we want with what we've got, an interesting theology).
There is a comic strip I like called Pearls Before Swine. In one series of strips he decided to have the main characters bring back Abraham Lincoln. He is happy at first, then finds out he gets assassinated and gets all drunk and depressed. Then he decides to go back to his own time, where he is later shot.
The creator, Stephen Patsis got a lot of angry letters about showing Abraham Lincoln acting not like a historical figure, but actually acting like a real human. Patsis said in response (Quote approximated) "I've been reading up about Abraham Lincoln... (And) I've found he joked about death a lot, so I think Abraham would on my side with this one.", which is pretty much the stance I take with the founding fathers/vampire thing.

Being wrong

I had a conversation with my youth minister that went something like thins
Me: Is it a sin to be wrong?
Youth Minister: Um, no, I don't think so
Me: Then why is it considered a sin to be the wrong religion?
The youth minister never really answered that.
I remember when I was (Very) young, I thought anyone who didn't believe in "The Right God" were evil. I know this seems very extreme, but unfortunently some people have opinions the aren't all that different.
For that reason I think that it is not a bad thing to be a different religion than I am, and if there is any judgement by god, they will not be judged by their faith but their deed. We have all been wrong on pretty major thing. I have no doubt I would be Jewish, Muslim, Atheist,  Buddhist, Hindu, or whatever religion my parents were had I been into a different family.
Incase that this post is confusing, let me explain:
When I was young, I was wrong about something that I thought very major (Thinking anyone a non-Christian were "Bad" and because I was Christian I was "Good"). Everybody has had similar misconceptions, so it is therefore not a sin to be a different religion, or else it is a sin everybody has committed.  

4th (Or rather 5th) of July

I heard somewhere that in England they celebrate it by sitting around, drinking cheap beer, and mocking us. While here we set off highly dangerous explosives into the air for entertainment and drink the exact same (Brand of) beer.
Of course, unless you are under the influence of alcohol, fireworks are perfectly safe devices.
You normally think of our country as wonderful and great, because, of course, it is. However, think of something else for a moment. The american revolution was formed because of anger at the British, much of which comes from the boston "Massacre". The history book I read in 6th grade said that (Quote approximated) "Some boys were  throwing snowballs and making fun of british soldiers. They got angry and shot 5 of them". What really happened was boys and men were throwing snowballs at soldiers, yes. But the snowballs were filled with sharp ice. Clubs were also being thrown. On of the soldiers was knocked down by one of the clubs and his finger accidentally tightened around the trigger. The rest of the men thought that they had been given the order to fire, so the shot. 5 lives were lost, yes. But they were not from evil, menacing british soldiers, but rather an accident resulting from a violent riot.
There were other causes for the American revolution, some of which are moral, but at any rate the british are and never were not some evil race of anti-Americans as some sources say (Such as the the play Paul Revere, the Musical!)
My point? That, even in the class room, history picks its heroes and villains. We are Americas, so therefore the beginning of our country is supposed to be thought of as a fight as good vs. Evil, even when it isn't. I don't know what I would do if I were a teacher. Do I stick with the history books or sympathize with the British?

Proteges

Proteges. I've dealt with quite a few of them. There isn't anything wrong with them, in fact, there being something unusually right about them is what defines them as a protege. Being able to do advanced algebra at age eleven, write thousands of lines of code, read a 400 page book in two days, and so on. They are, in my mind the ones that will succeed in life, but then again, maybe not.
I read somewhere that there was an extremely smart person, but he had no social skills and ultimently failed. I'm sorry that that was so vague, but as you are reading this likely you have a story of your own that fits in with this.
But people with all social skills don't get all that far either. I can sure think of a lot of people like that. Someone that has something about them, some charisma, that make you want to follow them. I'm not saying all people with a lot of social skills are like this, but I know some people with a social spark so intoxicating, that they could tell you something so stupid that it's laughable... and you will still want to believe that because of the way they say it.
You need a combination to succeed. I know it seems unprofessional to quote a children's book (Then again, I'm not a professional) but as Theodore Geizel (Or Dr. Suess) said "Life is a great balancing act" and I have to believe it.
The greeks believed in something called the golden ratio, which basically says that you are happiest when youare in the middle of the spectrum, which is basically my point. Truly successful, happy people are both talented and social. Of course there are exceptions, but that is basically how it works.

Clutays

Or however you spell that word. It sounds like clu-shays. I think it means something, mainly an idea, that is overused. It is a bit of a cycle. A clutay is used over and over until it is so overused that is is funny, then a new idea is invented, which in itself may soon become a clutay.
I don't think that many people stop and think about the original idea. Sure, some of them might seem a bit stupid, but some of them are legitiment ideas. You don;t want to go around saying "I came up with the phrase world peace" or "I invented the idea of the tractor beam" because both of those are overused. But they both represent something that would seem interesting, had we heard so much about it (Sure, the idea of world peace carries a lot more meaning, but both of them seem out of reach for the near future unless major changes are made).
I wonder how I would feel if I made up a clutay. My idea used and reused until no meaning remained and it was almost a joke.

I'm back

Camp kind of left me worn out, but with only 2 days left of camp, I think I can blog. I posted a while back about being inclusive about gays and lesbians. I have known for a while that being mean to them is very bad and has lead to many suicides. And I thought I was above thinking it weird.
That all changed when I started reading When you are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. It is a hilarious book, though very vulgar, but the thing that really struck me was when he talked about his husband.
At first I thought it was a girl named David (I know a boy named Erin), but when he straight out said he was a homosexual, despite my better reasoning, I felt like it was a bit weird. I hope that know gay, lesbian, or  transgender readers are offended by this, but I felt it was a bit unnatural for a male to be referring to his husband.
It kind of makes me wonder why people would actively tease and harass people of different sexual orientation. Sure, I felt like it was a bit weird hearing about David Sedaris's husband, but I wouldn't actively be mean to him . I guess there are some people that, when they find something distasteful, they try to weed it out, even if the distasteful thing is a harmless human trait. And actually, the only reason I found his homosexuality weird was because it was the first time I had actually heard being gay referred to casually. If I talked to someone who was Lesbian, Gay, or Transgender on a regular basis, I would probably find it normal.  

Sorry about the contest

I realized that very few people want towrite on this blog, especially at such short notice.

Kindergartners

You remember how I said I was volunteering for VBS? Well, I heard the lessons that they were teaching them and I realized that they were inaccurate. I tried explaining to them how it really worked. Unfortunately, I got assigned to be the leader of the kindergarten, so it wasn't that easy. In the lesson that day, they talked about how Mary went on and on about her toddler (Jesus) would walk on water and stuff. I told them that there was no clear record of Jesus' life before he was 6, so that was completely fictional. Then they told us Jesus read the bible, and I explained to them that Jesus didn't read the bible we read today simply because it didn't exist. I told them that Jesus read the Torah (They thought I was saying tuba) because he was Jewish (Odd, isn't it. The person that started Christianity wasn't a Christian at all). Then I started to tell them about how the new testament was made hundreds of years after Jesus ascended into heaven. I told them that the part that told Jesus' story was made up of 4 gospels, one of which had different sources than all the others (John). The other three had 4 different sources that the later ones borrowed off of each other (The Q source, Luke, Matthew, Mark).
They started tuning me out, which made me realize it was a mistake to try to explain the Q source to 4-year-olds.

God gave his only son to save us from our sins

I have heard those eleven words over and over throughout sunday school, always wondering what it means. They never specified which sins in particular, or why, even though our slate has been wiped clean, there is still a lot of sin. But then again, why did Jesus die on the cross?
I think it was a sign of god's peace. He sacrificed his son, and there was no bloodshed over it. When the Israelites imagined their savior, they imagined a warrior. Jesus was showing them he was the opposite, a pacifist. He would not conquer his enemies by killing them, but by convincing them of his ideas. Killing leaves behind dead bodies and angry friend and family at the killer. Convincing them leaves nothing bad in its wake. Jesus couldn't have killed those who tried to crucify him, not because of a lack of strength, but because it would go against his teachings and make the whole teaching irrelevant if the teacher was hippocraticical.  

Gender Steryotypes

We had a party for the last day of school, and I was going down the stairs to the bus when I saw two girls hugging each other. At first I thought that they were hugging each other to say good-bye for the summer or they were lesbians (Which I do not disapprove of, for new readers). Then I saw that one of the girls was crying. I opened my mouth to say something, possibly ask what was wrong or try to comfort the crying girl, then I realized a simple truth. I was a guy. Guys are not supposed to care about people who prominently show emotion. I know it's weird, but I also know that people of both genders think you odd if you show a trait of the opposite gender.

So I ran as fast as I could down the cement stair case, hoping I wouldn't slip and possibly severely injure myself.  

Looking back on it, it seemed stupid and cruel, running away when I saw someone displaying emotion. It probably made her feel even worse about herself that someone would run away when they saw her crying. 

Like I said, running away was stupid, but it would I was afraid it would be awkward, asking a girl I didn't know well what was wrong. So should I have done what was natural and talk to her, or do what was supposed to be natural and run. In my opinion, gender stereotypes don't enhance our lives, only limit them. And social scientists have found that most of the gender differences are learned by society, rather than inherited. 

If it weren't for gender stereotypes, life would be a lot easier. 

V.B.S.

I have recently signed up to be a helper for my church's VBS (Vacation Bible School). I figured why not since I didn't have much else going on this summer. I had happy memories of VBS when I was younger, but oddly none of the good memories are religious. Most of them involve heckling the Romans that were about to re-enact the prosecution of Jesus. Unfortunately, the teenagers in Roman legionary costumes were given wooden spears, and if you annoyed them enough they wouldn't think twice about poking you.
Another one of my fondest memories is my endless war against the children's minister at my old church in Oregon. See, I had a bit of a dispute with my sunday school teacher. She was convinced that religion and debate were incompatible, and no one had any right to question her. Sadly, the religion she taught as law involved hell for all none christians, satan being an actual being, and a completely literal interpretation of the bible. I, allied with two other sunday school students many times tried to challenge her on that, but she wouldn't hear any of it. So I took it upon myself to challenge the entire children's ministry of that church. Fortunately, I have no qualms against the children's ministry in my new church.

2nd amendment

I have recently heard about Sarah Palin messing up on her American history, saying that Paul Revere went around town firing shots into the air and warning that the british were going to take away their gun rights.  I would like to point out that their was no second amendment back then, so there wasn't any real reason why the British shouldn't shut down the American rebellion, and taking away their guns would be the smartest thing to do.
I find that one of the great mistakes of American history is making a big deal about how we can say what we want, publish anything we want, and practice any religion we want within reason, then screwing the whole thing up by saying we can also keep guns under our pillows the the next amendment.
Of course, there is reason to have protection of gun rights if the guns in question are used for hunting. You may say hunting is cruel to the animals being shot, but it's a lot less cruel than genetically modifying them so they have breasts so big they can't walk (As KFC does). A swift bullet seems a lot more humane than a life immobility. But the fact stands that you can buy a riffle with only a short background check. If I had it my way the only guns allowed should be low powered, and any person above 18 can only have 1 gun at a time. As well as that, guns should not be allowed as self defense. If I had a gun in my hands every time I got angry, I'm sorry but sooner or later I'd get so mad I would be tempted to pull the trigger. And I doubt anyone reading my blog can claim to be any better.
I heard a ad over the radio one day, and it went something like this "(Gunshot) Come over and try our wide selection of guns at (I can't remember the name) (Gunshot). Protect you and your loved ones! (Gunshot) Don't let intruders endanger your family any more, so come over to-"
I am appalled, because it seems to be implying that you would potentially wound or kill an intruder. If it were up to me, I would let however breaks into my house take my valuables and not live with the guilt of cutting a humans life cruelly short for the rest of my own life. Which is more valuable, possessions or human life?
  

Film

I have a friend who I have included in multiple posts (See the links below). He is a triplet, and multiple births generally lead to birth defects. He isn't in a wheelchair and he acts somewhat normal, but when he told me he was going to write a book, I was surprised.
I have attempted to write a book before, and I have concluded after nearly a dozen failed attempts that a middle schooler does not have the attention span to write anything longer than a novella, and a short one at that. So I was shocked when he came up to me and said he was done, I was shocked.
It isn't short either. It takes up almost all one of those big notebooks. His handwriting wasn't that readable, but the parts that I read were incredibly good.
And this was made by someone that many people consider inferior to themselves.
 Anyways, he wants to do a movie with me based on his book. He already has a lot of it planned out. Once he asked someone if they would help with the movie, and with one look at them I could tell they were thinking are you serious? And I would be lying if I said I think we would finish the movie.
Then again, I would be working with someone with the constitution to write a whole book. And if he convinces me to stick with it, well, maybe by the end of it we'll have a full length movie.
http://name-not-shown.blogspot.com/2011/05/talents.html

http://name-not-shown.blogspot.com/2011/04/miracles.html

Getting better

I have a very good book called "Pick me up". It has a lot of stuff you never knew, never wanted to know, but are glad to know anyway. One of the sections is on philosophical questions. They were the usual ones like "What is the meaning of life" (Which they didn't answer, only gave opinions about), but one in particular caught my attention. "Is the world getting better".

Apparently, the idea that the world was getting better was originally thought of by ancient greek philosophers. They thought that which each generation life would get better, but we would never reach a perfect world. I like that idea, and if you look at things, in a way it is coming true. Only half a decade ago (Which is a very short amount of time, relative to the entire history of the world) telephone was the best to communicate. Now we have facebook, skype, cellphones, email, and countless more communication forms. 

But  some people say the opposite, and they have a point too. In the coming years there is expected to be overpopulation, water and food shortages,  extreme global warming, and much more. So which one is right?

I asked my brother about this while my dad was in the front seat, rocking out to coldplay. Here is what he said.

"The world isn't black and white like that. I think that it is very uneven, the way that the world changes. For example, Albert Einstein made discoveries leading to nuclear power, which is a good thing (Unless there is a crisis like in Japan). But that discovery led to the atomic bomb, capable of incredible destruction, which is obviously a bad thing. Einstein didn't want the destruction of countless people like that, but he accidently got it. It's is uneven".

That is what I think too. I don't think the world will lie in ruins and starvation, but I also don't think everything will be great. Like my brother said, it's uneven.

   

Finals season

Right off the bat, if you have read my intro, it states nothing about what this blog is really about. I had no idea what this blog would be about when I started.
WHen I went in to get a haircut today the barber asked me what I was thinking about. I told him that I was thinking about finals.
Only later did I realize that he was asking about what haircut I wanted.
Speaking of finals, on a few tests before this I prayed to god to help me through it. I seriously doubted that I would do any better. However, I did do well on those tests. So did god help me?
My answer is no. And I'll tell you why. I read in an Andrew Clemans book once that there once was a test that was supposed to show which students would progress noteably in the following year. And those students did make suprising progress, the only thing was, the students were randomly picked. But they were expected to do better, so they did.
I think that when I took the tests, god wasn't guiding my hand twords the right answer, but I expected I would do well based on some insane hope that god would help me. And so I accidently helped myself.  

Intelligence

Going to school in a somewhat affluent part of Austin, I see really intelligent students, and students that are labeled as "Dumb". And I am struck by  how similar they are.
Obviously, the more intelligent students are the ones that do the work, but why don't the the "Dumb" students just do the work. Aren't they fed up with being thought of as stupid? Don't they want to do something with their lives?
I don't think that it is their faults. Actually, scratch that, I do think that they had a choice about whether they   do well or not, obviously there isn't some person in their house stopping them from doing their homework or studying, unless child abuse is accruing. I personally think that they are all different and have different reasons for not doing well, from laziness to having a deceased family  member. But these are just people in good districts, think about bad ones.
I think that the main problem with bad public schools is not enough funding, although that is a problem. I think the biggest problem is they aren't using the money they have well. if you look at how much money is put into each student, you wonder why they aren't excelling. If I had it my way, that money would go to getting really good teachers. Of course, other supplies are needed too, but you can learn with a great teacher and terrible supplies better that you can learn with great supplies and a terrible teacher. Of course, some schools it's not an either/or situation, in which case the school probably isn't receiving the funding due to low test scores, in which case it shouldn't be ignored but whatever is impeding academic excellence should be addressed.

50th post spectacular

This is my 50th post, so I will do something I rarely do.
I will post about religion on sunday.
It is odd, many students at my school are atheists, yet they take follow one of Christianity's cruelest traditions. An anti-gay standpoint.
I'm not saying all christians are anti-gay, in fact many christians I know are pro-gay or (Possibly, they don't straight out say it) gay themselves. but the fact stands that many christians say that being gay is a sin. In fact once I heard an entire sermon about how, and I quote "Marriage is between a man and a women, so we shouldn't be tolerant of anything else. So why is the church being attacked for that view-point". Sadly, it was the only sermon I have ever heard applause after.
yes, it is a fact that it blatantly states in the bible that it is a sin to be gay, but consider it is against everything this religion stands for. Jesus is all about love and inclusions, which is the farthest thing from the minds of bullies who tease students that go to the urinals next to each other.
But why is it in the bible? It is a common misconception that everything in the bible comes straight from god, or at least half-honest story tellers. The truth is that things weren't written down right when it happened in biblical times. It went through year after year of word-of-mouth story telling, changing ever so slightly every time it was said. Even the four gospels don't agree. I don't get why such a big deal to follow small part of the bible while ignoring the entire spirit of it.
I have been accused of being a "Cafeteria Christian" or someone who cuts out the less tasteful parts of religion and only follow the easy parts. But to me, being nice to your enemies is worlds harder than excluding homosexuals. And if I'm wrong and St. Peter sends me to hell (Which I seriously doubt exists) then I invite you to laugh. Anything to lighten up the mood of eternal torment.  

Facebook

I am on facebook, and I enjoy it. The problem is, after seeing the social network, it shows that the person who made it cheated his best friend. So is it still moral to use it?

Blogging

Please excuse the fact that most of my posts are rushed, as I have little time to blog at night. ALso, nintey eight is not a goo number.

D&D

Today I had a Dungeons and dragons game that went late, so I can't do a long post. I want to do a retraction from my I'm sorry post. I did remove the original, offensive post. On another note summer is coming, and so it is time for camp half-blood! I get so worn out from it I most likely won't have time for posts for a two-week period, though.

Talents

I heard today that Pixar is in production of its first ever movie that could potentially be rated PG-13. It is called 1906 and is about the 1906 earthquake of San Francisco. I wonder what families will think to see the child- oriented company show a dark side.
I heard this from a student that has trouble speaking (Not serious trouble, but trouble none the less).
I have already posted about him. To see the post copy and paste the URL at the bottom of the page into the space at the top of you computer where the URL goes.
I kind of assumed that he wasn't all that smart, being disabled and all.
I was very wrong.
He is extremely knowledgeable about computer animation and movies in general. Normally he doesn't use a very colorful vocabulary, but he used words I don't even know. If I hadn't heard him stuttering I could have believed he was an animation expert.
It's really incredible to think that everyone has talent, but they do. I herd somewhere that people who aren't good at reading or writing are sometimes prodigies with mechanics. I always assumed that if you didn't do well at some subject in school you were either lazy or just weren't smart. Now I realize that there are all kinds of intelligence, some of them not even measured in school. Whether inherited by natured or learned by nurture, talents are something everybody has. So why not do something with them?


http://name-not-shown.blogspot.com/2011/04/miracles.html

people

There is a comic book series I am reading called the full metal alchemist. In it, it lists the materials that are used to make up a person. It is really surprising that that is all we are, scientifically speaking. so my question is, if we had all those materials, could we make a human being completely artificially?
My answer is no. Not for a religious reason, that it would be wrong to play god (Because that never stopped us before), nor a scientific reason that we would have to make trillions of cells artificially out of nothing more than a pile of materials, which is virtually impossible, but a completely different reason.
Again, I will approximate a quote (Because I don't own the comic book). I think the quote goes something like this "For thousands of years alchemists have been trying to make humans out of those materials that can be bought by a child allowance, but we can't. There is a missing element, something we don't know about yet".
I do not think that it is possible for people to make other people (Other than the natural way) because something is missing. We are more than just a bunch of material (Mostly water). And if said I found out what that missing piece was, I would be either be super-intelligent or lying (Most likely the second).
Oddly enough, the rest of the chapter is about a priest tricking the townspeople into blindly following him and doing whatever he says because of empty  promises to them. To many people it sound appalling, but if you look at the history of christianity, it's nothing new.

humility

Sleep is a weird thing. The more effort you put into trying to achieve it, the harder it is. To truly achieve it you have to be apathetic about wanting it. And even weirder are dreams.
I know someone who claimed that whenever he dreamed, he was aware of it and could change it however he wanted, so he had his own little world for 45 minutes of the night. To me, dreaming and knowing it is a terrifying experience. To know the world around you is not real, but rather you are inside your own head, freaks me out. Twice I tried changing everything in my dream. For a split second I felt like a god in my own head, they my world came crashing down and I woke up.
I guess no one can really be god, even in their own heads. No person has complete control, but we enjoy an illusion of control. I think that is why Jesus preached humility. Not that he necessarily needed to be humble, but he had to show people how to act by setting an example. We can't have true control, which is why we need to stay humble. In my experience, it is the humble that succeed. The ones with the largest illusions of control come crashing down, just like my dream.

Nintey-five

Nintey eight may be good, but nintey five is best

Ninty-eight

I like the number nintey eight.

Extremely flawed magic

Today during lunch we had nothing better to do, so we started doing magic tricks with cards. I asked if I could do one, so they let me. I had the person draw a card, and then put it back in. I drew a random one out, and asked if that was their card, and got the unexpected answer "Yes". Unfortunately, they had just put their card in a weird way, so I should not be expecting an invitation to Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry any time soon.

It reminds me of a commercial I saw for freeze-yourself frogurt once.

A person in a magicians outfit stepped on stage with an audience of about ten people and said "I, the magical king of frogurt  will turn this regular boring yogurt in to amazing frozen yogurt." Then the frogurt king but the yogurt into a conveniently placed freezer. Then on the screen it showed 4 to 6 hours later and went back to the king of frogurt. "Hasa!" He said "Look at this marvelously frozen dairy-based treat". The thing was, the crowd was exactly the same, so they must have waited there all 4 to 6 hours. That must have been really boring. 

Summer

Summer is coming. I always find it odd, on the last day of school I am ready for summer to start, and on the last day of summer I am ready for school to start.
I thin that, as far as human nature goes, we all want change. Could you imagine doing the same thing, day after day, year after year, decades and centuries, spanning into eternity? I can't. I can't even imagine doing the same thing every day for a month.
In the long run, all humans are ADD. We can't stand being in the same place for years and years, doing the same thing. We grow tired of routine. I think that explains my argument with my parents.
See, I didn't always live in Austin. Up until a year ago, I lived in Portland, Oregon. Then my dad got a job offer, and we moved here. I just can't understand why they would do that, move away when we had such a good thing going. I had friends. I was doing well in school. I felt like I fit in. Not that my life in Austin doesn't fit those description (Except for maybe the third). But I had no idea why they needed change. That is because for me Oregon was the only place I ever lived. Living there was just as natural for me as breathing. My parents had moved to from another city than Portland, so for them Oregon was just another phase of life. That is why we can't see eye to eye on the issue.
Austin is great, but I still wish I were back in Oregon.

I've got nothing to post about

It's true.

Well, it's 9:48 on saturday, may 21st...

...which means either the rapture didn't happen or hell on earth isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

On another note, I would like to congratulate Rohl Dahl for making a point I made, years before I made it. In his book "The Twits" (Which is a quick read as well as an interesting one) brings up the vise-versa of what I brought up in a post about a month ago. I said when someone is a really good person, they look good (Due to our natural instinct to breed with good people, our minds takes their appearance and adds it to our physical idea of beauty). What he said was that when some one "Thinks ugly thoughts, the ugliness shows on their faces" (Quote paraphrased).
That is true too. I know people in my own life who I think really cool, until they do or say something, well ugly. To once again quote Jacob lawrence "Ugly is how someone acts, not how they look".
I guess we mix those two up sometimes.

The Rapture

I was on a run with some track guys today when there were a lot of sirens from a police car and for no reason a hyper-conservative runner called out "It's the rapture!"
I don't know why, maybe he thought god was plaguing us with jay-walkers.
Now, I have never believed in the rapture, or at least that it would come in my lifetime, but I decided to call back "No it isn't revelation is not at all literal" (Though I would later learn that it comes from Paul's letters, not revelation. I have never particularly liked Paul because many people consider what he says the word of god, when obviously he was only human and made mistakes like all of us).
He called back "It is completely literal", and I said "Then you better hire an atheist to look after your dog." (Actually, I think that if the rapture occurred, animals would ascend just as people would, and so would atheists who had been good, for that matter).
It was the most interesting (And shortest) shirtless theological debate I had ever been a part of.

The Civil War

I have never really been appalled as much as the violence of the civil war as I am now. Imagine  yourself on the front line, when the enemy did their first volley you had a 10% chance of survival. The second volley would most likely finish you off. Those bullets can rip through the bodies of about 15 people, so the second or third lines aren't any better. bayonet charges were supposed to aim for the groin. Why could any country let this happen, let alone The U.S., the land of prosper and freedom.
The obvious answer is slavery, and though that may have been why the south seceded, it is most definitely not why the 16-year-old boy would sign up. They would sign up for adventure. So there is a pretty clear moral here.
War is not an adventure, it is a slaughter.

I can't post tonight because I don't have time

It's true you know.

Weird stuff

There are some weird people in my school.
For example, one day I was doing a long, slow run for track when  person came up to me in a Hermione Granger costume the thursday before thanksgiving, which is when the midnight release of Harry Potter 7 part 1 came out. She sprinted ahead of me and said "I win, you mundane muggle!"
I asked her if she was getting ready for the midnight premier and she said "What?" completely oblivious to the fact a Harry Potter movie was coming out that night.
In other words, she just dressed like that normally.
I appreciate people like that, they risk being teased to give other people a laugh. I wish I had thier courage.

Hell

I do not believe in hell.
In many ways it is illogical, why would a fair god give a person an eternity of pain and suffering for only a life time of evil deeds? If you look at how long your life is compared to how long the earth has been around. Our 114 year maximum seems miniscule compared to the billions of years that our planet has existed. What could someone possibly do to deserve never-ending pain?
The only reason that I think the whole idea of hell has stayed around is revenge. When someone does something bad to you, whether it's cutting you off or endangering your life, you would be comforted by the idea of them being tortured to an inhuman capacity for all time. But the thing is, very rarely do people consider themselves in hell, only others.
 In my opinion, I do not know what the afterlife holds, but I doubt it includes eternal torture.
One more thing, when people kill a gigantic number of people, normally they think it is for the greater good, or they are insane, or both.

Church

I am not really sure what section of christianity I belong to. It's kind of odd, the whole religion of christianity all came from one person, Jesus, but there are so many divisions and sections of it. Of course, they all use the same bible, but they are so different. I guess they weren't always so different. Before the reformation, it was all the same church, the catholic church. I have nothing against the catholic church today, but it was pretty bad back in the middle ages. Back then the idea of having a separate government and church would be revolutionary, even blasphemous. To them, religion was on of the number one things in their mind, which was kind of odd. Soldiers where praying to Jesus, prince of peace, before going off to war. Then again, with the black plague and death lingering so near, you can't blame them for giving it their best shot to get in to heaven, even if their efforts ended up a bit hypocritical.

The rant never graded

When I was in 6th grade I  had to writ a short paper about one thing we hoped would change in the future. I decided instead to write a 2 page single spaced rant on why the death penalty is immoral.
Maybe writing it in a class taught by a hyper-conservative teacher was a bad idea.
The thing was, it never got graded. My teacher never handed it back.
The paper basically outlined why the death penalty is wrong, because it kills many people who will later be found innocent, because it is extremely expensive (2 million dollars for the average execution), because it has not been proven to be a deterrent, because the only real reason we keep it is for revenge, the list goes on and on.
And the thing I find odd is another kid wrote his paper on why Obama is a terrorist, and I think he got his back.

Choosing religion

It's kind of weird. When I start asking about religion, some people have the following view "I don't know what created this world and I could care less." To some people that is a horrifying view, not really caring who created the world. However, that is not half as bad in my perspective as another group of young people. They believe in every word of the bible, and take it literally. It is not their word-for-word interpretation I don't like, it's the fact that they have never questioned it.
Some may say that never wavering from your belief is honorable. To me, however, it just seems somehow empty. To question faith, to wonder if god is really out there, to think about what will happen to you when life comes to a close, is a sign of strength. You, not your parents should choose what, if anything, you believe. And if it is exactly what your parents believe, so be it. Also, this decision shouldn't come prematurely. You shouldn't refuse to go to church when you are 8 because you question what the pastor is saying. Actually going to a church, even if you don't agree with it, will help you make your decision.

Running low on ideas

So it's come to this,  post  about running low on ideas.
I have already used the "I can't post today"excuse a few times, and I feel it is becoming a bit clushaed, it;s just hard to think of an idea every day.

Myths

A lot of people out there probably wonder why so many myths are taught in school while A) nobody believes them anymore and B) they have no clear purpose in today's world. To quote Rick Riordan "It's not like on our job aplication it's going to say please explain why Kronos ate his children. (This may be a word or two off from the actul text, but you get the idea).
I enjoy reading Greek myths, but that still doesn't explain why they have to be taught in schools. That is, until, you realize what a profound effect they have on culture.
For one thing you can tell ceratin aspects of things named after them (For example, I knew Io was a moon of Jupiter simply by knowing Io was a moon and the Myth of Io), but they have other effects too. Traditions, even now, are based off of them. In Cross Country it is considered a minor form of heresy not to walk slowly over a bridge, based off the Eyptian myth that when you are over running water you are free from gods. The eagle was the symbol of Zeus far before the united states even existed. So yeah, the gods have a profound effect on culture today.    

I have absolutely nothing to post about

It's true you know.

England

I have commonly been asked if I come from England because I appear to have an English accent. I have been asked this by virtually everybody except for people that have been to England. My responses very from "No" to "Oy, you seem perceptive, chap. Mind some tea and crumpets after I use the lou?" (Or the loo, I've never understood which.)
 I used to think it was my speech impediment, but I have decided it is something entirely different. I commonly use big words like "Obscene" or "Exceptionally" that people know what they mean but never themselves use. I think that people seem to associate exceptional literary skills with England, so that is where it comes from.  

A weird dream

last night I had a very weird dream.
I dreamt I was in my room, but a few things were off. As I started investigating them, I came to the conclusion that this was simply to weird to be reality and it must be a dream. So should I kill myself and wake up or stay in the dream.
Of course, I would never suggest killing yourself to get out of a dream because it could have serious consequences if it turns out to be real. Also, in real life I had a very irritated eye, but not in the dream, so it was a bit of an escape. On the downside, a dream can turn into a nightmare very quickly.
I decided to do something I had never tried before with any success. I tried to alter the dream into a completely different dream. It worked so well that I forgot it was a dream until I woke up. So that is what I suggest if you are ever in a dream that you know is a dream  

Music

Just one thing that you should know about me, I abhor any music without drums.

My brother has recently bought the new fleet foxes album, and I'm glad I don't share a room with him because that music drives me up the wall.

I guess that's just the way I am. I could never stand music like that since I was 5. I have no idea why. There is music that I don't like that has drums, but it is still above the fleet foxes. Just a random thing that I felt like blogging about.

Death

I'm sure you have all heard of the death of  Osama Bin Laden. I don't really know what to make of it.
My first impulse was that he was evil and deserved to die, but then I went to school.
All around the hallways people were happy for his death. I may have felt like that when I first heard about it, but celebrating somebodys death seems wrong. Just plain wrong.
I decided that my new opinion is that nobody deserves to die and that captureing him would be better. This had mixed results, as some people agreed with me (Including the girl from the evolution post), I was repeatedly called an idiot. My main 2 arguments were 1) We could have captured him and interigated him and 2) his death would probably be catalist for more terrorist movement (Because we killed their leader). then somebody pointe out that extracting any information unless we used torture, which I am also opposed to.
Then I learned that the troops had gone in with the intent to capture and found themelves under gunfire, with no choice but to quite litteraly"Fight fire with fire".
My conclusion? Though the killing was justified to save the lives of the SEAL agents, no death should be celebrated and frankly we should be concerned for our national saftey instead of patting ourselves n the back.        

Catholisism

I had lunch with a very interesting person today, especially on the topic of religon. I don't know if it would be appropriate to divuldge the name, so for privacy's sake I won't mention it.
Basically, she is a practicing member of the catholic church, which suprised me because of what she said about the catholic church.
I had some missconceptions about the catholic church, one of which is that they can elect the pope (Either in a majority rules way or an electoral college of different regions). The other is that they could have female  preists. Neither of which is true, and my friend not only expressed her annoyence at their sexism and non-demecratic choosing of leaders, she also called the reacher at her church profane and immature. So how could she stay in that denomination?
I don't think that you could really find a flawless denomonation in any major religon. Sure, they may not have completely fair pope decisions and the choice of preists my be sexist, but there are steps being taken to change that. And as for the pastor in her particular church, the entire catholic community can not be blamed for that.
And I'm not catholic. I know very little about their traditions. And while some of them may seem extremely unfair, there must be a redeming quality.
People wouldn't go to their churches for hudereds of years if they weren't doing something right.  

Stop motion

Sorry I haven't been posting for the last few days. I have been working on another project.
A stop-motion movie.
I have come up with a lot f theories for how to make a good story. Here is my best one.
1. Come up with a basic idea (You can share dreams, the gods are alive in the united states, there is a pill that makes you smart, Wizards and witches live among us).
 2 Build on that idea until you have characters real enough to carry an ID.
3 Start with the ending and work backwards.
4 Find a means of distributing your story.
My mean of distributing it is, of course, a stop motion movie. I know most people do a claymation or something like that, but I am doing a bionicle moc (My own creation) stop motion. If you are not aware, bionicle is an extremely intricate lego design system, although the story is really confusing. Here are some pros of a bionicle stop motion.
1 They all look unique (With clay-mation they could start all looking the same after awhile)
2 No talking (They don't have moving jaws, so just take a picture of their face and put in the words)
3 No mess, unless you count a thousand little plastic peices everywhere.
Despite that, they do have cons. Thye don't look like real people and everytime you need an extra you have to craft an entire new one.
My story is called the apple of discord. Basically, there is an object that the brain always associates with desire, so when you see it you automatically see what you want most (A distant parent sees their kids happy, a man in debt sees all the money he could ever want, a widow or widower sees their spouse again). There is another thing. Your brain never gets tired of looking at it. You could stand in front of it as your body withers away feeling completely content.
Creepy, huh?