What is Salvation?

Many times in life, we often attribute certain events to destiny, to fate. We say that such things could not have been prevented; that certain things were bound to happen. If we were to take a purely logical standpoint, one could say that all occurrences are the result of causes, known or unknown. If such is the case, are our struggles pre-determined, such that whatever action we are currently taking was already decided? In such a way, why do we struggle to attain our desires if so much of our lives is attributed to destiny? Is it pointless to wish for things, to strive for things?

All things are born, live, and eventually die. That's all there is to it. That's simply the truth of this world and all who live within it. No matter how hard you try or how long you strive, that fact will not change. Everyone else forgets this; I shall never forget. Yet, all that means is that I'ev never forgotten the true meaning of a life such as mine.

But everyone strives for something. By continuing living, we are actively choosing to continue to pursue something, even if that something is as simple as continuing to live. Yet, what are we to do when we find out that our wishes will not be fulfilled? What do we do when we find that it was destined that our wishes would not be fulfilled?

Life is like walking through a maze: There are always many paths to choose from; we simply choose one and follow it. Everyone believes that what they desire lies ahead along their path. Yet, I do so only to confirm that what we desire is not there.

Who decided that life would be like that? What did they truly decide? What if that which we desire was along a path that we did not choose?

Time will continue and eventually run out as you ponder your question. A path not chosen is the same as a path that did not exist. "If only at that time..." No matter how many times we look back with regret, we cannot go back. We cannot return to how we once were. We cannot change anything. All we can do is continue moving forward towards our uncertain future. "Some time other than now... Some place other than here..." Will you struggle along that path for all eternity, in search of what you desire? How unfortunate.

Are you saying there's no salvation?

What is salvation? Is it for all your hopes and dreams to come true? "Things should not have become like this..." you say. Is salvation the ability to turn back time and grant all the wishes that you lost? Given that, can you be certain that you will not make a mistake the second time? Who decided this? What did they decide?

If we cannot go back, then we must start on the correct path from the beginning. What one can do and what one should do, shall become one and the same. That's because we know ourselves best.

...

For those of you who don't know me, I'm marginally insane. The preceding was a Platonic dialogue (an idiot asking questions, being answered by an enlightened person) between Gilbert Durandal (and myself to an extent) and Rau Le Creuset from the anime Gundam Seed Destiny. The dialogue (with a few edits on Gilbert's part from me) comes almost entirely from GSD episode 29, which I posted the last 1/3 of in my second post on this blog. You may recognize a lot of the lines, as I have a tendency to use them in other posts regarding my philosophies about life, as well as in my Facebook profile and sometimes just when I'm talking with my friends. As I've said before, anime has had a profound affect on me in many respects, with this dialogue being one of the most salient. But I believe if you truly read the words, think about them, and analyze their meanings, you will see their truth. That there is no inherent "goal" nor "purpose" in life; we choose those for ourselves. And even if we make a difficult choice and hurt someone, that was still an active choice. Even if you don't watch the entire series, go to Youtube and watch GSD episode 29, "Fates." (It may be a little confusing, but it's worth it). Part 1 Part2 Part 3

Evolution 2008, Part 1: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix

I originally wasn't going to write about the same or similar stuff each entry, but with the Evolution tournament around the corner and many new fighting games coming out, I am just too excited to write about anything else besides fighting games. So bear with me for a little bit.

I have decided to delve deeper into the Evolution tournament by looking at each of the tournament games. I'll look at what makes them different from each other, the communities that support the game, and if I have a good idea I'll say who is a top contender for the title.

And so the first game I will talk about for today is Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix. I will refer to the game as HD Remix or Remix for short.

HD Remix is actually the 7th version of Street Fighter 2. The previous versions were Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition, Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting (known as Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the Super Nintendo), Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and finally Hyper Street Fighter 2: The Anniversary Edition.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST for short) was the last revision for a while. The game has many concepts that are found in all modern 2-d fighters, most notably the super meter used for super moves. Although the concept of the "Super Move" was around before ST, ST was the first to make super moves correspond to a meter. The meter was filled a little every time you used a special move, and when it was full you could execute an extremely damaging super move. ST was/is the best version of Street Fighter 2 , and is still played in tournaments till this day.

Hyper Street Fighter 2: The Anniversary Edition (AE for short) was released about 3 years ago. In this game, before you picked a character, you picked what version of the character you would use based on the previous games. For example, you could pick World Warrior Ryu (the original), Champion Edition Ryu, etc. If a character did not appear in a version of the game, they were unselectable. So if you picked World Warrior mode, you could not pick from the four boss characters (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, M. Bison) or from the New Challenger characters (Cammy, Fei Long, Dee Jay, T.Hawk) since the bosses could not be played in the original and the New Challengers did not even exist in the original.

Unfortunately AE was not well received because it was terribly imbalanced. Champion Edition M.Bison is just too good, and players scrapped the game.

And now under the guidance of game developer and former SF champion David Sirlin, comes HD Remix. It's called this because the old sprites have been drawn over into HD sprites. Also the game has 2 modes of play. Classic mode, which has the original game play and Remix mode, which removes the glitches in the classic version and balances out the characters more. This game is not released yet, but will be out in time for Evolution, and will be a downloadable game for Playstation 3 and X BOX 360. They will be using the Remix mode for the tournament.

Whoo, that was a lot of background on the game. Now I'll focus on the community of players.

The biggest difference between the ST community and the others, is the level of skill among the players. ST is the oldest SF game played competitively and it's because of this that while small, it's also the toughest. Almost everyone who plays ST has been playing it for years, some even since the days of the arcade. There is no such thing as an easy pool in ST, every opponent is tough. Weak opponents in an ST tourney are as rare as diamonds. To hang in ST you have to be really, really, good. Anything less, and you might at well let your opponent have his way with you.

That being said, it must be remembered that the classic game is not being used here. It's the Remix mode the tournament is using. And while the fundamentals of the game will still be there, many differences will be noticed. Therefore, I can't really predict who will win the tourney. I doubt any new names will be in the top placings, but it's still hard to tell. If I had to pick a player, it would be John Choi. Choi is one of the OGest of the OG's, so if he enters the tournament he would have a good shot. (I'm not exactly sure if he still plays, although he really hasn't gone missing either. I'm pretty sure he entered the last tournament).

Well, that will do for now. I'll leave you with a demo video of HD Remix. It's not exactly pro level playing, but you will get to see the new sprites in motion.

Enjoy!

-Judd

Meaningfulness

Let me first introduce myself. I'm Matt. I know JK because we went to high school together. Currently I am attending college at Bloomsburg University. I'm a philosophy major who spends most of his time playing a trading card game called Magic: the Gathering. I might just give that topic a whirl some time, but today I’m going to talk about some philosophy. For some of you, you may know exactly what philosophy is. For others, philosophy is a word that you’ve most likely have heard, but don’t really know what that word means. That’s okay, don’t be scared away by that fact. Historically philosophers have fought over the definition so hard it’s really hard to give it one anymore. That’s not to say I can’t give you a general idea. The easiest way to explain philosophy is to explain the kinds of things philosophers do. These things typically fall into a three categories: metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. The first two might scare you. They are pretty big words. So to keep that from happening let me spell them out. Metaphysics is the study of the nature of all matter in the universe. More specifically it is a bunch of hypothesis about the nature of things within the universe. Epistemology is the study of what can be known, a bunch of hypothesis about the nature of our capacity for knowing things. Logic as you probably have guessed is the study of arguments, how they work and such. I tell you all of this not because I’m about to jump into an entire history of it, but because; I want to talk about a specific philosophical problem. You see I am one of those people who loves their major and spends a lot of their spare time doing things that concern it. Well with philosophy that means a lot of introspection. (Also reading a whole lot of really old texts.) The problem I want to discuss is one in metaphysics.

A few days ago I attended a speech by a not so famous professor from Ohio, Dr Nathaniel Goldberg. His topic was dubbed “Meaningfulness as a Secondary Quality.” Now to understand this topic you have to understand two things, which I will explain. First meaningfulness here is just the meaning that words in any language have. And second a secondary quality is a type of condition that certain types of properties have. Properties such as color, taste, texture and smell all have been famously argued to be secondary qualities. This is because the philosophers who were arguing wanted to distinguish them from Primary qualities. The best way to define both secondary and primary qualities is to contrast the two. Primary qualities are purely objective. We believe that even if we weren’t around to sense the objects with these properties they would still have those qualities. A secondary quality in some way is both subjective and objective. With secondary qualities there is something objective out in space that acts on the subjective senses of some observer. In the case of color light waves bounce off some object and we observing them experience color. A good example of primary color is shape, shape can be deduced from two different senses, we can both feel and see shape. Shape doesn’t rely in any way on us like color does. This secondary quality distinction was very famously argued by John Locke.

To say that meaningfulness is a secondary quality is to say that meaningfulness does not exist solely as an objective property. This, to me at least seems pretty obvious. If you believe that there is a secondary quality distinction it’s very hard to say that meaningfulness is a primary quality. Yet, the part that complicates this debate and in my opinion makes it very exciting is that there is a third viable option: Meaningfulness as a purely subjective property. This objection is not as easily dodged as meaningfulness and a primary quality was. This objection can be highlighted by the difference between meaningfulness and color as properties. Color’s objective component as a secondary quality is most obviously the object and the light waves it reflects. Meaningfulness’s objective component is much harder to define. The words on the page, the sounds that we make when we talk and the gestures we make with our body all seem to be things that convey meaning. Also our natural languages in some respect were developed by ourselves. We may not have initially went about designing our language, but as it developed there are many cases in which we purposefully designed certain words. These lead some to speculate that the objective part of meaningfulness is arbitrary at best. The actual meaningfulness is just a subjective construct of our minds, the words or symbols are just a vehicle we’ve devised to share these meanings. The only objection I can think to raise to this is that even our own minds have an objective element, brain states. So if we could in principle do a brain scan to figure out what kinds of brain states cause different meanings to be interrupted, then we could use that as the objective component of the secondary quality of meaningfulness.

I hoped you understood and enjoyed what I was talking about. More than that I hope it got you thinking.
- Thanks for reading, Matt

More Than Meets The Eye!

Our lack of perspective growing up often causes us to have fond memories of certain things (like play-dough, GI Joes, Hungry Hungry Hippos, etc.) that seem quite trivial when we reminisce. Television shows are often an extreme case of this feeling. When we were young, both boys and girls probably watched some shows (and enjoyed some shows) that we would rather not admit we enjoyed (No... that's not a copy of Rainbow Brite in my basement... Swear to God). Yet, the case is that we enjoyed them when we were younger. Power Rangers, Transformers, Thundercats, Voltron, Johnny Quest, TNMT, GI Joes, were among the many shows that I watched and loved (and to an extent, still do). When I think back on them today, I realize not only how incredibly insipid most of them were (c'mon, the theme of Transformers was that guns (Megatron), planes (StarScream), and tape players (Soundwave), were very very very very BAD), but how absolutely horrendous the voice-acting was. Somehow, I still look back on those days fondly, and find myself constantly re-exploring my interest in such series via Wikipedia.

One special case of this is Transformers: The Animated Movie, released in 1986, the year of my birth. Not only does this movie contain one of the defining scenes of my childhood (I HATE TO RUIN THE MOVIE FOR YOU, BUT OPTIMUS PRIME, DIES), but it is probably where my incessant love/obsession with montages began. Even knowing that this movie was made in the 80's (the glory days of the montage), this films montage-level is of epic proportions. To put this in perspective, the Transformers movie soundtrack had 10 songs on it when it was released in 1997. All 10 songs were in the movie. In their entirety. Needless to say, I loved this (and still do), which causes me to visualize the scenes corresponding to each song when they come up on my Ipod (Yes, I bought the soundtrack).

But, my favorite scene from the entire movie was one that during my childhood, was not even slightly salient to me. That scene is Unicron's dialogue with Megatron. For those of you who are in-the-know (cool), you know that Unicron was the last role of the late Orson Welles (yes, Citizen Kane/War of the Worlds Orson Welles). According to Wikipedia, it is said that Orson Welles described his role as "playing a toy" in a movie about toys who "do horrible things to each other." Yet, his dialogue is so amazingly delivered, with his sarcastic responses to Megatron's hyperbole being extremely well acted. For your viewing pleasure, I've included this scene (it starts at about 2:25), and a transcript of the dialogue for those of you who suck at listening.



Unicron: Welcome...Megatron.
Megatron: Who...who said that?
Unicron: I....am Unicron.
Megatron: Show yourself!
Unicron: I have summoned you here for a purpose.
Megatron: Nobody summons Megatron!
Unicron: Then it pleases me to be the first.
Megatron: STATE YOUR BUSINESS!
Unicron: This is my command. You are to destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. It is the one thing - the ONLY thing - that can stand in my way.
Megatron: You have nothing to fear. I have already crushed Optimus Prime with my bare hands!
Unicron: You exaggerate.
Megatron: The point is he's dead! And the Matrix died with him!
Unicron: No. The point is YOU ARE A FOOL. The Matrix has been passed to their new leader - Ultra Magnus. Destroy it for me.
Megatron: Why should I? What's in it for me?!
Unicron: Your bargaining posture is highly dubious...but very well. I will
provide you with a new body and new troops to command!
Megatron: And?!
Unicron: AND NOTHING. You belong to me, now.
Megatron: I BELONG TO NOBODY!
Unicron: Perhaps I misjudged you. Proceed....on your way to oblivion. *Unicron begins torturing Megatron*
Megatron: NOOOO!!!! NO! I ACCEPT YOUR TERMS! I ACCEEEEEPT YOOOOOOUUURRR.....
Unicron: Excellent.

Evolution 2008 Fighting Game Championships

I think as my first post with an actual topic, I'll start with my love of fighting games. If you read my first post (and if you are cool you will) you know that I am a big fan of fighting games. Well Evolution is the big North American tournament for fighting games. Players from around the U.S. and other countries like Canada and Japan come and compete in their respective games. For people who love and play fighting games, this is our Super Bowl.

Evolution hosts a number of games each year, some are staples and appear yearly, others come in and out. Basically what determines if a game is ran is if it's new and good.(Good as in has strategical depth. And yes I know that could be different to different people, so if a large number of people think it's good, it'll be there.) So for example, when Virtua Fighter 5 came out, it was ran at Evolution 2007. But as said before, it also has to be a good fighting game, so don't expect the next Mortal Kombat to be in the line up anytime soon (except for the off chance it is actually good.)

That criteria is used for it's initial run. But for it to stay in the line up, the game must not only be good, but it must have a strong player base so that the turnout is good. Unfortunately even though it's a great game, Virtua Fighter is just not that popular enough to have a good player base, so it is not in this year's line up. Obviously if a game is returning, it's not new anymore so that criteria does not matter.

This year there are six games being run. Those games are: Street Fighter 3: Third Strike (3s for short), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (MvC2 for short), Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix (ST for short and by god does it need a shorthand name), Capcom vs. SNK 2 (CvS2), Tekken 5: Dark Ressurecction (T5DR) and Super Smash Bros. Brawl (SSBB).

As you can see, it centers a lot on Capcom's older fighting games. This is because the tournament in it's early days was a Street Fighter only tournament. Later it changed to accept other fighting games based on the criteria I mentioned earlier. But this is also because of all the fighting game communities, Street Fighter is the most popular (keep mind this doesn't refer to mainstream popularity.)

On an interesting note, one of the staple games has been dropped this year, the 2-d fighting game Guilty Gear. Apparently many finalist were late for finals because they took a 30 minute break even though they knew finals were happening. The tournament staff saw this as (rightfully so) a slap in the face, and decided to drop the game this year. It will probably be back next year, since CvS2 is a dying game.

Evolution has incredible amounts of hype, just as any big sporting event would, and like sports has it's own set of "celebrities". These guys have been playing for a long time and have practiced their asses off to get as good as they are. And no, I am not saying video games are like sports. But just as my friends like to get hype for the Super Bowl, I am hyped to see match videos from this tournament. If I had the finances, I'd go participate.

If you have more interest in this, go to EVO 2008 Championship Series

Now to give you a taste of the hype, I'll leave you with the DVD trailer to Evolution 2006. Two things you'll notice is that Dead or Alive 4 is on there, which was quickly dropped and Smash Bros. is not on there, since it was added last year.

Enjoy!

It has Begun.........

Wellllllllllllllllll, it looks like I'm the first guest poster. Now some of you may know me, but others of you reading may be JK's friend's at college or complete strangers. Either way, you wouldn't know me. And some of you, although you know me, maybe haven't seen me in a long time. Basically what I'm saying is, it's time for some introductions, and in some cases, re-introductions.

I'm Judd, the baddest motha fucka this side of the Mississippi.

I am 20 years old and I attend Mansfield University. It's not the biggest school around, but it's still a good school especially if you're a communications major like me. I am the hip hop director of the school radio station (although I am giving up that title next year.) I also have a radio show Mondays noon to 1:00. I hope you enjoyed that shameless plug. I am close friends with Jeff and another guy named Nathan (who I hope will also post on here.)

Aside from the usual interest like movies and music, I also like stuff like anime. I don't think I get as much out of it as Jeff, as I simply just like watching good television. Most t.v. shows are utter crap these days, that's probably why I watch anime more often than not.

I also like video games like the typical young male, but I especially like fighting games. Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, King of Fighters, Guilty Gear, Virtua Fighter, Super Smash Bros., you name it. Basically if it's a good fighting game with deep strategies, I'll play it.

Probably where this interest in fighting games came from is my love of martial arts. I am black belt in tae kwon do, and if it weren't for financial and health problems, I'd have trained a little longer before college. I also enjoy MMA and Martial arts movies as a result of this.

I'll leave it at that. You'll all get a better idea of who I am through future posts, so this is probably a decent start. To get a better feel of who I am, what better than to leave you all with a youtube video starring yours truly. Later

New People?

Well if you took the time to read Judd's comment on my "State of the Blog" post, you'll notice that he said I should invite other people to write with me. Well I did so, and the response has been favorable, although not overwhelming. A few of my friends have come forward saying they wish to write, now it's all about seeing whether they actually follow through and do it. So, you may start seeing posts by *gasp*, people other than me.

In other news, my life seems to be calming down for the most part. I have a job, I'm currently looking for houses and have a couple appointments set up, I just took an exam, so I don't have any more for at least a couple weeks. Yay, it's gonna be great having a social life again. Although for me, social life pertains much more to simply hanging out with friends and going to dinner, as opposed to getting totally wasted. It's funny because people always have one of two reactions, depending on how old they are: if they're around my age, they say "omg, what do you do for fun?!" and if they're older, they say, "That's a lie." The truth is that I don't find parties with loud blaring music and girls vomiting everywhere to be all that fun. Yes, I drink alcohol (preferably some kind of whiskey or bourbon), but I do so only in moderation, and I do listen to music, but usually unless I'm playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero, it's only loud enough to be background noise. Why? Because when I meet someone, I want to get to know them. I don't want to know a name and a face (mostly because that leads to way too many awkward "wait, do i know you?" moments, but...), I want to know the important things, like what things they enjoy, what they dislike, what their motivations are, what they want to do in life. Even crazy tidbits like how much they love bugs (Eric), how waaaaay too damned Chinese they are (Eugene), or their amazing talent to turn any situation into some post-WWII 3rd world metaphor (Bailey).

So you may ask, "So what do you do for fun if you're not out getting drunk as hell?" Trust me, if I had a concrete answer for that, I would do so. But I don't. Why? Because I just can't classify everything that's fun to me. Fun has so much to do with who you're with, your state of mind, and your surrounding environment. Sometimes that's going to eat with Hyunjin (and sometimes Eunice when she's not too busy sleeping/eating). Sometimes that's watching Hitler videos with Bailey, or contemplating our plans to create "Asian Noodle Bus." Sometimes that's rocking out with Nate and Judd, MTG with Matt, or just general fuk-a-roundery with Nick (yeah I just noticed that could be construed as either totally awesome or totally gay...Same thing, right?). The point is that anything can be fun if you want it to be. Most of the time it's all about how socially acceptable your "fun" is.

I was thinking about what video would properly fit this topic, so why not a nice mellow song that I would play at one of my parties, just to give you a feel as to how we hang out (and no, I'm not a stoner, although the song may make you think I am). Everyone should know this song.

State of the Blog

Well, it's been a couple weeks since I started this blog. I came in with few expectations, saw those expectations rise dramatically, and then came to realize that my lofty goals were not quite within perspective. At first, I really only meant for this to be some sort of online diary: a place to express my thoughts, my ideas, and perhaps an entertaining anecdote or two about my life. I for one feel that life is full of stories; think of all the amazing stories in your life that you've never told anyone. Then, realize that every single person in this world has just as many stories as you. Think of all the stories we'll never know; all the tales of every day life that we shall never be able to witness in our entire lifetimes.

To share these stories was my original goal; all I wanted was to share a small portion of my life with those who would listen. I hoped many would be my friends, to give them a chance to see certain facets of my life and thought processes that they themselves perhaps had not observed. And yet, with each story, with each post, I became more and more consumed with the idea that perhaps this could become something more than just my own little medium to release my rants. Perhaps this could be a place where ideas could flow; where people would intermingle with their thoughts and dreams, and perhaps say all the things that they cannot say in person. With every hit count, I grew more anxious. With every new visitor, I came to expect greater things (yes, I know all of this information. It's called Google Analytics, it's like magic). I began to put up ads to track impressions on my site, added Google Analytics to measure how often people accessed my site. I scoured the net searching for add-ins and templates which I could apply to my blog. Yet I feel that much of this has become, unnecessary.

I was hoping that by now, there would be more people that would be willing to speak out. More people that would be willing to engage in conversation. More people that would be willing to express their likes and dislikes, and whether they enjoy reading my rants or are annoyed by my "advertising" (which consists of facebook statuses and word-of-mouth). Perhaps my expectations became too high. Perhaps I became too wrapped up in the process that I forgot to maintain my perspective. Perhaps I was too entranced by the skyrocketing number of page-views (which unbeknownst to me was probably mostly done by myself at various different locations).

But, no matter. I guess I will continue doing as I planned on when I first embarked on this voyage. For a while there, I was writing simply because I believed that if I didn't write, someone would be disappointed. Yet, I feel now that such is not the case. As such, I now only write when I feel like it. When I have something that I feel I need or truly want to comment on. Much as I would hope for others to come forward and join me in this world of self-expression, I will not hold my breath. I tell you it is an experience unlike any other; to be able to let out all of the things that perhaps you could never tell to someone else face-to-face.

I guess I can end this post with a video like always. But this one has absolutely nothing to do with the post at hand, but whatev, not like I care. Thus, I give to you a clip from Lewis Black's "Red, White, and Screwed," about fossils.

It's All Decided For Me

So, as you probably know if you actually read this blog regularly, I'm home on break right now. That means leaving the beautifully solitudinous lifestyle that is living alone at college without my parents. Now I'm at the age where I would like to believe that I can make most of my life decisions on my own without my parents' inputs or supervision. And yet, very often, my parents tend to still make decisions for me. Not necessarily major decisions, but decisions none the less that I feel affect myself alone and require no external input from my parents or other sources. In this post, I would like to share with you a few of the interesting and unique exchanges I've had with both my parents over the past week in order to highlight their ability to make decisions for me...

Mom: Let's go to the gym tomorrow.
Me: What time?
Mom: 9 AM.
Me: uh...I don't really wanna wake up that early...
Mom: oh it's ok, I'll wake you up.
Me: ...

Dad: When are you going to clean your car?
Me: I'll do it sometime this week.
Dad: No you should do it today.
Me: Why? I want to hang out with my friends today, I'll clean it tomorrow.
Dad: NO! (in his loud angry voice), you have to do it today.
Me: uh...why?
Dad: Because it's better that way.
Me: why?
Dad: Because it is.
Me: ...

Mom: It's Good Friday today, so you can't eat meat.
Me: Uh Mom, why can't I eat meat, I don't even go to church anymore.
Mom: You just can't.
Me: Mom, that sort of thing doesn't really mean anything to me.
Mom: Well you're not going to eat meat if you're going to eat with us tomorrow.
Me: That's ok, I'll just go and get some food myself, like that Beefy Cheesy Melt from Taco Bell.
Mom: No you can't eat meat!
Me: Why not?
Mom: Because it's Good Friday.
Me: But you already said I could if I didn't eat with you.
Mom: Well you can't eat meat, and that's it.
Me: ...

Dad: You better make sure you email back your Uncle David quick (to thank him for his support during my job search).
Me: I'll email him tomorrow.
Dad: No you have to do it now.
Me: What difference does it make if I do it today or tomorrow? It's not as if he's waiting for it.
Dad: What's wrong with you? It makes a huge difference.
Me: How so?
Dad: It just does, that's just how things are.
Me: ... (so you really have no explanation...)

Mom: You have to check out housing for next year now.
Me: Mom, I already did this last year, I can't do anything until I'm back on campus and I can actually go visit the places.
Mom: But you should still get them all lined up so you can visit the places over the weekend.
Me: Mom, a lot of the people who live there won't be back until Sunday night.
Mom: Not everyone leaves for spring break!
Me: Yea not everyone, but most people do.
Mom: So, you should still get them all lined up.
Me: It's ok Mom, I'll just do it right when I get back before things get too busy.
Mom: No you have to do it now during break when you have time.
Me: Mom, I have to go visit the places, so I can't really do anything until I'm back on campus.
Mom: Well you have to do something before you go back or else you'll get beat out for all the good houses.
Me: ... (not really)

These are just a small sampling of my daily life at home with my parents. Naturally they mean well, but I believe that a lot times they have a hard time letting go. They're so used to making every decision for me that it's tough for them to adjust to my new level of independence. But I'm ok with that. It comes with its negatives (them being extremely annoying) and it's positives (my mom still doing my laundry and my dad still giving me money whenever I come home). Back to school on Monday. Back to living by myself. And in a lot of ways, I'll both relish leaving home and yet still manage to miss it.

As a tribute to my parents, I was trying to find a good video to properly fit today's theme. But instead, I choose to present a song that is an old favorite of both my parents, and me..."Hotel California," by the Eagles. Enjoy, and try not to be so hard on your parents when they act dumb. God knows they do it a lot.

Yatta!

Talk about ironic. Within 24 hours of writing my tirade on lack of job success, I land one. I haven't formally accepted the offer, but it's with a team at Legg Mason, an asset management firm. I still do have to hear back from my old boss, Peter Laurelli at Hedgefund.net, and then decide from there. But I have a feeling he's going to tell me to go work with Legg Mason, considering I've spent the past two summers with him and have basically done everything I could in terms of intern work at HFN. He's an excellent boss, the best I've ever had out of all the jobs I've worked in my entire lifetime: a great guy to work with, and a ton of fun to be around. If I do decide to work with Legg, it will be a tough decision, simply because Peter was such a good boss to me. Very few people outside of my family have really cared about what happens to me or how much I enjoy myself on a day to day basis, but Peter always asked me how my weekend's were, how I was doing, or if I was enjoying my work. He truly cared about me much more than as simply an intern. That sort of thing I will never forget, and I will always be in his debt for his giving me my first "professional" level job.

Honestly, how many people can you name (outside of your family) who actually care about your day-to-day well-being? How many people do you know that genuinely care about your own interests, not just about how much you can benefit them? These sort of bonds are extremely tough to let go, and that's why my possibly leaving Peter and HFN is especially difficult. I have maybe a handful of friends at college, and a handful of friends from HS that genuinely care about me, and not just when I'm salient in their lives. But each and every one of those friendships is special to me, simply because it is so much easier to not care about someone than it is to care about them.

It's funny, because a lot of times the people we appreciate most, we often seem to appreciate the least. Those who know me personally know that I can be a big jerk sometimes, usually in jest, but I doubt that any of my friends would say that I'm the nicest friend they have. I remember one time my ex-girlfriend Sam asked me, "Why are you so mean to people?" Of course this was after we had broken up, and I was being mean to her at the time, so naturally I made up a bullshit answer to make her head spin and quickly moved on. I told her I was mean to people because everyone I had ever been nice to had taken advantage of me (not true at all). I then said that since nobody remembers nice people, nobody desires nice people, that I chose to be mean (again, completely false). Wanna know the truth? I act mean because that's how I've always acted around them. That's how I've always acted, that's how I've always wanted to act, and when we hang out, that's what I naturally become. It's not as if I'm unusually cruel to my friends, I simply say things that a lot people would construe as being mean. I think of it as friends being friends. Like calling Judd, "fat" or Matt, "bald." Or Nick, "black/Mexican/brown/(any other derogatory racial term associated with dark-skinned people except Italian)." And naturally they come back at me with some derivative of Chinese or small penis. Usually one or the other. Or both. Whatev. But, the point has always been that we act that way simply because that's how we act. There's never been an underlying cause, we've simply chosen to be like that over time. In short, I choose to be mean because frankly, that's what feels most natural. When I don't do so, my friends think something is wrong with me. And honestly, as long as it doesn't hurt them (meaning they don't tell me it hurts them), I'm gonna act however I want.

These friends, even though I may treat them like shit sometimes, they're still my good friends. I really wanted to post a video in tribute to my friends, but to be honest, it's proven to be quite a task to find the proper video. At first i wanted to put up another Coheed vid, but I've done a few too many of them. Then I was thinking perhaps Linkin Park, but their songs are too down. Then I thought maybe the Ataris, but too many Ataris songs are about love and girls, so yea, I love my friends, but not that much. Then I thought I'd do Backstreet Boys, just to see how many of them actually read this to see how many "WTF IS THAT?!" 's I would get. But, now I've decided to go with a song that we all used to rock out to back in the careless days of high school. Presenting, "Spread Your Fire," by Angra!

Time To Grow Up And Be That Man

Went to an internet seminar today, mostly about marketing in the internet and using your website to sell-products, one of those work-at-home promotions where you function as a middle man between wholesalers and consumers. Run by StoresOnline.com, the session was pretty informative, talking about keywords to get to the top of Google and other search engines, as well as what methods are the best ways to make money and what pitfalls to avoid. The software was pretty cool too, with a lot of their resources being dedicated to the creation of your website using a variety of exceedingly user-friendly templates and click-button options. Yet, something like that is not what I or my mom were looking for, so we went mostly for the free food and perhaps some tips to improve this blog (yeah not really). But, what one of the speakers talked a lot about was the difference between broke-minded thinkers and rich-minded thinkers. He made a good point that the majority of Americans view recession as a bad thing, whereas a select few of the population actually view it as a good thing, as a part of the financial cycle and something they can take advantage of. Given the current state of the US economy, I think it was pretty interesting that he would find such a unique perspective regarding what most of us believe to be the worst case scenario: economic depression.

Now those of you who know me know that I've been searching for a summer internship for the past two months, and those whom I've confided in know that I haven't had much success. I sent out over 30+ resumes to many different companies, from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, to Legg Mason and Wachovia, to Capital One and Bank of America. I've had a handful of interviews, a couple second rounds, but so far, nada. It's a truly humbling experience: to be told several times a week that you're not good enough for a particular company or particular team. It's especially hard when I thought I had done well during the interviews, when I thought the companies really wanted me, and then I receive an email saying something like "we're sorry, but we could not find a position that would properly allocate your skills at this time, but feel free to apply next year!" Or something along those lines.

I'm not the cockiest guy in the world, but I also am fairly self-confident, and I believe myself to be more than worthy of all the positions that I applied for. Yet, it's extremely tough to maintain a positive attitude when you're repeatedly told that the best you have to offer is not good enough. Given that I have been completely honest with all these corporations, and given my best effort in each endeavor, it's particularly hard to swallow being told that my true self, the person who I really am underneath it all, without facade nor affront, is simply not good enough. It's tough to take that one time. It's even tougher to take it 20+ times.

How does this relate to StoresOnline's presentation? Well a lot of my peers and relatives told me something along these lines: "Times are tough; the market is so far down that companies are naturally cautious when hiring interns, so it's normal that some qualified candidates will get turned down." Sometimes I have a tough time believing this is the case. Maybe it's just my friends and relatives attempting to comfort me, to allow me to save a little face in front of them, and not attribute my lack of success to failure on my part. But is this truly what companies are thinking? If such is the case, I wonder, how can they be so short-sighted? Do they truly believe that the returns on an internship shall be measured within the next 6 months? Within the next year? The next 2 years? I contend that a company won't see the full returns on their internship until long after the intern is gone and perhaps left the company. If we think about internships this way, that their returns are long term as opposed to immediate, how can a company judge the amount of interns to higher based on the state of the economy? Shouldn't it be based on the quality of the candidate pool? Yes, they have bottom lines, they want to minimize their overhead, and they want to maximize their profit over the short term to please investors. But do those outweigh their necessity to educate the next generation?

If we think of this in purely selfish terms, the companies really have little incentive to hire interns. Most of them take at least a month to learn their job, then work a month, then leave, a lot of times to other companies. In this way, the companies in turn lose all the money and time they invested in the intern to another company, in addition to the fact that they paid an under-qualified worker full-salary for a two month period. But don't the companies have an obligation to us, the next generation, to train us such that we may carry on and do good work in their stead after all those currently in power are gone? Shouldn't this be more significant to them than any short-term cost savings or surplus profit? Yet, it seemingly isn't. These questions have weighed on me throughout this semester, and it seems as if they're starting to take their toll. With each job I've applied for, another failure has come. Another reminder that I am not good enough. Another indication that my best, my true self, is not desirable. That I myself, simply am not up to their standards.

This semester has been so stressful, without a doubt the most stressful of my entire life (which is saying something, since I've had some pretty stressful semesters. Mostly, it's been because I've been trying to get a job so desperately and repeatedly failing. I fail, and I fail, and I fail, and I fail, and I fail, and I fail again. I've picked myself up each and every time, but it's tough. Sometimes I think about why I try. Sometimes I think about why I fight. And yet I continually come back for more. I don't really know why. Maybe it's because I can't handle the thought of letting down my parents. Maybe it's because I'm trying to rid myself of my self-image that I've always had things laid out for me, and the moment I've been let out on my own, I've met only failure. Maybe it's because I'm so scared to be branded a quitter, a coward. Maybe it's all of them. All I know is that I have to keep trying. I have to. There's nothing else I can do. There are no other options. I used to think that I could handle anything in life, as long as I had a few things to hang my hat on: love, success, knowledge, and skill. And over the course of the past year, I've lost each and every last one of them. I've come to realize that I'm not the most successful, that I'm not the most skilled, that I'm not the most knowledgeable, and that I'm not even memorable as a lover.

I leave you with this: "Mother Superior," by Coheed and Cambria. I can't think of a better song that expresses all the emotions that I've felt over the past few months, both the utmost sadness and the droll march of perseverance.

March Madness Is Upon Us!

Selection Sunday was only a couple days ago, and we're fully enveloped in the throes of March Madness. Admittedly, I am much more of an NBA fan than I am a college basketball fan, but I do try to pay as much attention to college as I can (given than many of the good players from college will be going into the NBA one day). This year I've probably played the least amount of attention to basketball in general, simply because I've been so busy this semester and last, which encompasses the entire basketball season. Yet, usually with minimal information, I've been able to create some pretty accurate brackets over the past couple years. I remember last year I had the highest scoring bracket out of all my friends on Facebook, but then again a lot of that was luck. However, there are a few proven facts that I've come to accept, through watching ESPN and my own analysis. Here are my top 5 tips.

5. Upsets are called upsets because they're unexpected; don't bank on them.

A lot of people get too upset happy when they fill out their bracket. Only pick an upset when one or more of the reasons below is fulfilled. Otherwise, don't bet on all the 13 seeds taking down the number 4's, because it's just not gonna happen. Don't fall in love with names like Kentucky, George Mason, or Villanova unless you have good reason to.

4. Look for flat teams to lose early.

What do I mean by flat? I mean teams that come into the tournament either on extended losing streaks, or early losses in their conference tournaments. Even though you would think these teams have something to prove in the tournament, more often than not, they fall flat and lose out in the first or second round. Especially watch out for second-tier seeds (ie 4-7) to fall prey to this. Watch out for Notre Dame, Louisville, and Purdue in this case.

3. Go with the hot team

Very similar to point 4, but exact opposite. Those teams that had great runs to their conference tourneys are much more likely to carry over that momentum into the tournament. Heads up regarding Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Drake, and even Georgia.

2. Always go with quality smalls over quality bigs

This one is simple; quality bigs won't play well without quality smalls. A lot of the turnovers in college basketball happen either when the ball is being brought across midcourt, or during the entry passes into the post. Thus, a strong guard like Ty Lawson, D.J. Augustin, Derrick Rose, or Jared Bayless will affect the games much more than guys like Roy Hibbert, Tyler Hansbrough, or Brook Lopez.

1. Don't pick against Number 1 seeds; they're number 1 for a reason

Yes we had a couple flukes a couple of years ago, but they're just that, flukes. The only teams that UNC, UCLA, KU, and Memphis have even a chance of losing to are the 2 and maybe a couple 3 seeds. Otherwise, don't bank on them not making the final four. Look out for dangerous 2-3 seeds like Tennessee and Texas, because they're the only ones with a real shot at taking down the top 4.


Oh yea, and don't fill out your bracket until the last possible second. Filling out your bracket early is about the dumbest thing you can do, because then you have a built-in bias when you try to edit your picks later.

I really do enjoy the NCAA tournament, not only because of the unpredictability, but because the games are so memorable. I'm also a huge sucker for those sappy "One Shining Moment," montages that they have at the end of each tournament (I'm a sucker for montages in general, but that's another story for another time). I watch the one from 2007 from time to time, and it's awesome because they have some of the famous calls, like when VCU beat Duke, when Ohio State came back against Xavier, and when Jeff Green nearly traveled and banked in the game winning shot. I remember where I was when I watched each game, and how I reacted. And that makes a beautiful segway into the 2007 One Shining Moment montage for this day's video. Enjoy this season of March Madness.

There ain't no reason why friends are this way

God I love break. Over the past couple years, I've had spare little time to spend with my good friends from high school. I usually get a couple weekends in the fall, 4-5 weeks over winter break, a couple weekends in the spring, and maybe 2-3 weeks in the summer. Every time I come home it's non-stop fun with the tightest group of friends I have. After an entire weekend of playing Rock Band and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, my friends had to go back to school while I get to stay home during break (my school is so gay with having spring break a week after all my friends have their breaks). These are the people whom I know I connect with, having 6-7 years of foundation for our friendships. Not to say that I don't have people like that at college, it's just that they're a little more dispersed and not part of a core group like my friends from HS.

One of these friends, Judd, said something to me that made me think a lot. A lot of people probably don't respect Judd as much as he deserves, mostly because he acts like a fool most of the time, but a lot of people tend to think that's all he is: a fool. But all the people who really know him know that he's a deep thinker and a good friend. We were talking in my basement (while playing ping pong, cause that's when we do our best thinking), when we started talking about the friends we have at college. Judd said he didn't have a lot of good friends at college, mostly because he felt like they didn't make a concerted effort to involve him in activities. In his words, "Why should I always be the one calling them? Why can't they call me once in a while?" That got me thinking. Why is it that we feel offended when we are constantly extending the hand of friendship, and those around us are merely accepting and never taking the initiative themselves? In the past, I've felt very similar sentiments to Judd's, and in a way I sort of agree with him. I hated being taken advantage of, being used, being taken for granted, all those things. Yet, what is the solution?

Do we simply stop contacting these people? Who is the loser in that situation? If I never contact someone, and subsequently never hang out with them, I am the one who loses out. This is because they never thought about me in the first place; it's not as if they're going to miss hanging out with me. It's only me who's going to be missing the fun times I have with them when I do call them. Sure, maybe they're not true friends, but then again, not every friend I have is required to be a true friend. It's ok to have some friends whom I just hang out with, who aren't good friends. Yes I'm putting myself out there, leaving myself open to hurt and betrayal. And yes, they are the ones who are at fault for such a lack of courtesy. But I'm willing to leave myself open to that. If anything, I can simply think of it as me leeching some fun from them. If you look at it that way, it's actually me being selfish and not them.

I kind of agree with Judd; it sucks that some people are like this and are so careless with their thoughts and actions that they don't even take the time to consider those around them. There's really no reason why people should act this way. But, that's how it'll always be. And that makes a beautiful segway into "Ain't No Reason" by Brett Dennen.

Matt Kraft is Dead

Today is my first day back home for spring break. Yesterday, my good friend Judd called me, number one to ask me when I'm coming home (I don't know why, I swear Judd has like a sixth sense, such that he can magically tell that I am home by some divine inspiration. Whenever I go home, I usually get a call from Judd within one hour of getting in the door). Number two, he told me that an old acquaintance of ours, Matt Kraft, had died.

Now I never liked Matt Kraft. The first time we met him was in Rich's card shop back in 8th grade, and he was an asshole. A complete asshole. Not only was he a real jerk when you played Magic against him, but he also ripped you off in trades, and occasionally stole your cards. Needless to say, we all didn't like him. After a couple years, Matt stopped coming back to the card shop. Maybe he got bored of it, or maybe he matured a little. Either way, he sold all his cards and we never saw him ever again. Some years later, whenever we go back to the card shop, we usually reminisce about the old days, when life was simpler, grades were unimportant, and the real world wasn't coming at us at full speed. And usually, we would think back and eventually land at least one or two snide remarks about how much an asshole Matt Kraft was. "Yea, he was such an asshole." "Wow, I'm really glad he never came back." And now he's dead.

It really makes me think about the impassable limit on all life. And how all of our frivolous hatred and mistrust and disdain for one another is so completely meaningless in the big picture. When Matt Kraft was active in my life (meaning I saw him more than once every 3 years), I hated him. When he was out of my life, I still managed to retain memories of how much I disliked him. But now that he's dead, it all seems so empty, so purposeless. I guess it just goes to show that no matter how much you dislike someone, you should never wish death on anybody. You can wish they could change; you can wish you could change. You can wish they would leave you alone, or that you could get away from them. But never death. Because if someone dies, that ends the game. There's no reconciliation, there's no hatred, there's no perpetuating the game. Death brings it all to an end.

As a tribute to Matt Kraft, and the ideas that his death has brought out in me, I first say, "thank you." Thank you for giving me the most vivid example of how meaningless our hatreds and prejudices are. With that, I present "Runnin (Dying to Live)," by Notorious B.I.G and 2pac. "I would never wish death on nobody, you know what I'm saying? Cause there's no coming back from that."

Anime Procrastination

Those of you who know me, know that I tend to not have a lot of free time. As if being in my junior year wasn't time consuming enough, I've also been very active in my job hunt for the past 2 months, as well as working 2 jobs, searching for a place to live in next year, and all the work that goes along with each. However, you might also know that in what sparse free time I do have, I have a tendency to burn it up through watching anime. These days I rarely watch more than 20-40 minutes a day (and sometimes not at all), but there are some days when I'll go on a binge and watch 8-9 episodes in a row. I do complain a lot about not having enough time to do stuff, but I guess that is fairly hypocritical given how I use some of my free time. Yet, I also feel that anime fulfills several very important desires in my life.

Number one, I enjoy stories. I enjoy learning about characters, seeing their interactions, linking them with my own. I enjoy experiencing their emotions, feeling their pain, reveling in their joy. Maybe it's because they're in Japanese, maybe it's because they're far less commercial than American television, but I feel that most anime's tend to have a lot more depth to them than most mainstream television. Which brings us to point number two.

I appreciate the depth and thematics of each show. Every anime I watch has an overlying message to it (if it doesn't, it's usually not exciting to me, so I don't watch it in the first place). I have a file on my computer that keeps track of all the anime's I've watched over the course of my life (believe me, you don't want to know how many that is), and each entry is accompanied by how good I think the series is, and what message or theme I got from the show. This way, when people say "watching anime is so useless, you shouldn't spend your time on such a fruitless experience," I respond to them that they're not useless. I have many mini-lessons that I've learned from each anime, some of them greatly affecting my view on life and my overall interpretation of the world around me.

And last but certainly not least, anime is simply how I choose to entertain myself. Some people play sports, some people play video games, some people go out and drink themselves stupid, some people do drugs, all in the name of self-entertainment. It's just that most people believe that watching anime is socially unacceptable, and thus anyone who does so must be an uninteresting or uncool person. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps it is uninteresting and uncool people who watch anime. But like so many others, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I leave you with "Howling" by abingdon boys school, the OP for the anime, Darker Than Black.

Painful Irony

I read a very interesting and moving article today on ESPN. Bill Simmons, known as the Boston Sports Guy, and one of my personal favorite sports writers, wrote an article on the death of Jamiel Shaw. It's a truly moving article, and really brings to life the reality of losing a bright, young individual with his most of his life ahead of him. Not only that, but it also creates a vivid image of the painful irony that is inner-city life for underprivileged minorities. Honestly, I am anything but an authority on the subject. My parents were always there for me, they always provided for me, I never got into any serious trouble (other than the occasional after-school detention), and I never ever once thought that I could end up dead walking home from school. True, I know absolutely nothing about Jamiel Shaw the person. I only know the picture painted by Simmons and various other news outlets. But a good kid is a good kid. I know lots of kids back from my high school that could've easily fit the image of Jamiel Shaw: Star athlete, gets relatively good grades, trying his best to get the most out of life. Some of those kids were really good friends of mine; others were complete assholes. Yet, that doesn't mean they weren't good people. That doesn't mean they deserve to die.

It's truly sad and ironic that he died the way he did. He was simply minding his own business, when death came to him. He didn't go looking for it. He didn't get himself involved in any activity that would put him into that sort of situation. It came looking for him. This could've happened to any of us. And in the end, it was the exact life-style that he was trying to avoid that killed him. He, who had avoided gang involvement his entire life, was killed by it.

In instances like these, we all wish that something could be done. That someone would step up and take control of the matter to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. But, not all of us are made for such lofty tasks. Many of us, me included, would rather sit and wait for someone else to come along and fix such a massive problem. But I tell you now, someone like that will not come along unless we want them to. Someone who believes that such things require elimination, here and now, will not come along unless we make it known that we want someone like that. That's why it's so important for us to be involved politically. Not because we have to make sure to fill out our little ballot, punch our holes and fill in our dots. But we have to make sure that our opinions are known. That those who run our country know what we want. And this takes a commitment from each and every one of us. Not a huge commitment. Just a commitment to remember that each time you talk to someone about politics, each time you have a conversation with a friend, a mentor, a colleague, or an acquaintance, to make it known that things like this are intolerable. In this way, such small acts can accumulate to become large acts, and eventually, someday, someone will come along who will have the character and ability to do that which we cannot do ourselves. Perhaps that someone will be someone who was affected by Jamiel Shaw, or grew up in circumstances similar to his. Perhaps that someone will be someone like Jamiel Shaw's killer, who has a stunning change of heart. Perhaps that someone will be someone you know. Perhaps that someone will be you.

As a tribute to those who started out as normal people like you and I, and did extraordinary things, here is the video for "If Everyone Cared," by Nickelback. Even if you don't like the band, simply hear the message and watch the images. "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." But don't take my word for it. I'm just Simply Casually Observing.

Exercising in Futility

As I hinted towards in my last post, too often we judge certain aspects of our life by how "useful" or how "beneficial" they are. As I said, just because something isn't useful, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. I guess this sort of builds on what I said earlier: That all humans are simply born, live, and then die. In the end, isn't everything useless? All the wealth we can accumulate and the accolades we can achieve, do they really mean anything in the grand scheme of this universe? Whatever our goal, be it success, wealth, happiness, knowledge, or truth, the finite limit set on our lives makes every action we take pointless. We're all going to die someday, humanity is going to die someday, the universe will end someday. So why should we gauge our actions based upon how useful or beneficial they can be?

Now I can hear many of you saying, "well wait, wouldn't we all be hippies then? Burnt-out 'I don't give a crap about the world' hippies. I mean, hippies stink. They really smell. I don't want to smell. I don't want to be a hippy and smell!" (At least that's my train of thought) No, because there are certain things that are worth doing, certain things that are not. It's not necessarily how useful something is, but more so whether it satisfies a certain desire specific to your own self. It's completely useless to draw a picture. Completely useless. A picture has absolutely no intrinsic value and is only given meaning by those who view it. However, if drawing that picture manages to satisfy the part of you that desires to draw a picture, then it's worth doing. This blog is completely useless (I mean completely). I have no idea if anyone reads it, I don't really put too much thought or research into each post (maybe 30 minutes of youtube searching for some cool clips and wikipedia'ing for pictures and random info), and I doubt that anyone gets any truly amazing revelations about their own lives by reading my ramblings. But simply having my thoughts written down satisfies a certain part of me that desires such.

A lot of people say that about my taking Japanese as well. "Why would you take Japanese, such a waste of time." (It's mostly my Chinese relatives that say this...) (Yea they're really racist...) And they're right. Japanese is about as useless as it gets, language-wise (probably the only more useless language would be Latin, because ALL the people who speak it in everyday conversation are DEAD). Japanese is spoken by the people of one tiny little island country, with a population just under 130 million (To put that in perspective, that's 1/10th the population of China). But to me, Japanese is fun. I enjoy taking it. Doesn't that make it far more worthwhile than taking some language that is useful but that I dislike/suck at/have extreme difficulty learning (ie Spanish/German/Chinese). Not to say those languages aren't worthwhile to other people, just that they're not worthwhile to me.

In the end, I guess all boils down to this: Don't do what other people tell you to do. Make up your own mind as to what is important, what is useful. Then do those things, and don't give a shit as to what other people think. Be true to yourself, no one else. And that makes a great segway into this video. Presenting "Be Good To Yourself," performed by Journey, with the immortal Steve Perry on vocals.

Why the hell would anyone major in Math?

Since my Partial Differential Equations exam is coming up tomorrow, I figured now would be the best time to put aside my studying and write a blog entry. A lot of people ask me, "How can you major in Math? Why would you do something so painful? What are you going to do after college, become a Math teacher?" with an amazing amount incredulity mixed into each question. Usually, if that person is a student, I choose not to give some cliche response such as "because I like it, " or "because it's interesting." Instead, I usually ask, "Why did you choose your major?" Now I have friends in all majors, Engineering, Economics, History, Anthropology (bleh), Philosophy (bleh), Biology (bleh), Marine Biology (double bleh), Chemistry (good God why?!), Communications, Marketing, Finance, Business, Computer Science and everything in between. Some people tend to respond, "Because then I can go into this," or "Because it'll give me the best chance of: getting into law school/getting into med school/ getting into business/ getting into (insert some part of "the system"). Indeed those are good reasons, but are they any more important than doing what you enjoy? If they're one in the same, all the more power to you. Yet so many people choose a major simply because that's the career they want to have or that's the lifestyle they wish to lead.

My idea has always been this: your undergraduate degree does not mean shit. You can major in Art History and go into finance, you can major in Mech E and go into law school, you can major in Biology and end up going into business. I can major in Math and go into finance. In the end, all that really matters about your undergrad degree is getting good enough marks to get into whatever area you're going into, and doing what you like to do. You're going to be studying the same thing for 2.5+ years; you should really make sure you enjoy something if you're going to be doing it for that long. And the fact is, I enjoy doing math. On some primitive level, there's some sort of feral joy I get out of instant results from my hard work (a correct answer). On one hand, math is science, forming both the foundations and extensions of the modern scientific world. On the other hand, math is art, in both the formulation and construction of proofs and the eloquence of certain expressions. Math truly is the border between art and science, and requires not only skill in both, but also an appreciation for both. In this way, it always supports my idea of an optimal life being one balanced in all respects.

In case you're wondering what the strange object which could easily be mistaken for some sort of item intended for drug use pictured at the top of the post, it is a Klein Bottle, which is a closed, non-orientable manifold that exists only in 4 dimensions. Non-orientable means that if you were to stand on it, you would not be able to differentiate east from west, north from south, and closed means that you could continuously walk in all directions without ever hitting a barrier. And such is merely the beginning of geometric topology, which is only one of the many modern topics in mathematics.

Ridiculous, right? Pointless? Maybe. Interesting beyond all imagination? You bet! But much like a lot of other things in life, I don't value things based on what other people say their value is. I'd be very willing to bet that probably 9/10 people that read this post (if 10 people read it that is) are probably thinking, "wow, you study some pretty useless stuff." In a way, I would agree with you, but just because something is not useful does mean it is not worth doing. But, that's another topic for another time.

To close, I leave you with this awesome song. For those who are friends with me on Facebook, you may have seen this already. It's an a capella song about math by The Klein Four from Northwestern University. (Note: most of you probably won't get why everyone is laughing, but it's mostly homonym-ic... yea, I just made that word up)

Music and Perspective

We all listen to music right? I personally love listening to music, going so far as to wear my enormous headphones to classes, on trips, on planes, in cars, everywhere (I wear enormous ones because they have the best sound quality, plus you get the added bonus of having a ready-made excuse for pretending not to recognize the ridiculously annoying person you meet on your way to class whom you'd really rather not talk to at 8:00 in the morning). It's even better in the summer, when I wear sunglasses as well (increasing my potential to ignore annoying people), thus effectively cutting off all communication between me and the outside world during the 15 minutes it takes to walk from my apartment to campus. Just to give you a taste of what I listen to, it's usually something between this...



And this...



The first band is a Japanese group, UVERworld. I first heard of them from several OP's of different animes i've seen (for those who don't know, OP is short for opening theme of an anime, serving the same function as that super-annoying song that used to play at the beginning of Friends), but since then I've began to listen to their mainstream stuff, including the 3 full albums and 10+ singles they've released. It's ridiculously fun, energetic, uplifting music that really makes walking a lot more fun than it should be.

The next group is of course Coheed and Cambria, a huge fave of many of my friends (Shout out to Nate and Judd). No explanation needed as to why they're cool. Just listen to the music and you'll figure it out (yeah the centaur + mermaid is a little weird).

But then again, these are just my interpretations of the band. I really think we all get our own feel, our own vibe when we listen to a song. A lot of people ask me why I like Japanese music so much when I don't understand the words (I kinda do now, since I've taken almost a year of Japanese, so I can make out about 2 words in 5, whole phrases if they're simple). But I really feel that music is so much of an experience beyond just the lyrics. The lyrics are simply what the writer believed the message or story of the song should be. In a way it's sort of forcing his/her point of view on to you. Whenever I listen to a song, I try to disregard as much outside opinion as I can, in order to form my own opinion based on my own observations, not someone else's words. So when I listen to music, it's much less about what the song is saying, and much more about how the song makes me feel, what sort of emotions the song elicits from me. When I listen to UVERworld, I feel happy, energetic, able to conquer any task by simply working to the rhythm of the song. In that way, the singer is really just another instrument, and not so much the directive force of the song.

Same goes for Coheed. A lot of the songs are very dark, and in some ways, during some times, this is a good thing to me. Emotions are like a spectrum and to be truly experiencing life, we have to experience them all in good balance. But most of all, the music makes me feel a certain way. Each song gives off it's own image, extracts unique mixtures of feelings and emotions from me. Thus, whether it's to have fun, let out some energy, mellow down, or wallow in misery, each song has it's own purpose to me.

In this way, I feel that everyone should seek their own interpretation of a song. Just because someone else said a song is good, doesn't make that song good. Just because someone said a song is bad, doesn't make it bad. Music is an experience, both pleasurable and insightful. And what one gets from music, whether it be entertainment, comfort, energy, or tranquility, is entirely up to oneself and no one else.