This I Believe - Edit

Based on a previous post, I decided to revamp it a little bit in preparation for a school assignment. The following came out of it. Still pretty horrible, but it's an effort:



I was at work the first week of my junior year of college, in the school’s ITS department, and I had to fix a media cart that was having issues in a classroom. The room’s vacancy was scarce, and a German class soon began session in my presence. The funny thing is, I probably learned more in that class during those five minutes than I learned that entire week. I learned how to say all of the months in German, and also learned that little kids are more apt to become fluent in several languages because the muscles in the human mouth grow in age to accommodate the language they speak. Thus, adults have a harder time learning different languages, whilst children can become masterful powerhouses of language fluency.

Little kids have power. This is especially apparent with the thing I love doing most: skateboarding. I started skateboarding when I was in high school, and I often wonder what I would have turned out like if I started earlier, like most kids these days, around elementary school. As I get older, the skill difference between me and younger skateboarders seems to get more and more tangible as the age difference widens. Little kids nearly the same size as the skateboard are able to pull off tricks I was just learning in the tenth or eleventh grade of high school.

And, sooner than I’d hope, much sooner than the rest of these kids, I will probably start to break down in time. I will feel the grenades of age ease into my spinal sockets and casually explode, shredding and fragmenting the discs in my back. I have far fetched visions of myself as an eighty year-old man carving a bowl or pulling off switch 360 flips, but really, I understand that inevitably, I will have to stop skateboarding for the sake of my own health. I will have to stop learning and teaching myself new tricks and daring myself to go beyond my own physical comforts for the sake of success. I will have to start learning and teaching myself about surviving in my physical body.

I am offered an oddly comforting reassurance though that, despite how early and how fast children seem to advance in skateboarding these days, they will still go through a realization such as mine at some point in their lives too. No matter what skill level they ascend to, all skateboarders will reach the same end result in time. It makes me feel less alone.

I’m not bitter of my own progression in skateboarding, nor am I bitter of the fact that kids are getting better and better at skateboarding at earlier ages. I condone such growth, and am hopeful that, unlike the filthy food corporations and their growth hormones, our youth hone their skateboarding skills out of pure love and nothing else. Skateboarding is more than just a hobby that people can talk about and express interest in. When two people meet while skateboarding, even if they don’t talk to each other, they are speaking to one another through the passion of learning at a unique pace. Each person has their own riding style, their own brands of boards, their own brands of shoes, their favorite tricks, and their favorite skate spots; these elements and many more mesh into a centralized message of love. Even if a person quits skateboarding in their later years and simply reminisces these elements once apparent in their life, they will look back on elements that captivated a sincere love, and will hopefully feel that love festering greater and greater for the skateboarders preceding them, offering zero traces of scorn or abolishment.

Skateboarding indefinably weaves itself into the lifestyle of people. Sometimes it’s a slow growth, and other times it accumulates like a fatal cancer. Skateboarding is a language, and I sincerely believe that those who speak it experience one of the most honest and satisfying methods of learning how to learn.

If Anybody Can Remember...

Nick Arcade. You know, the really really old TV show on Nickelodeon where the kids had to play arcade games and competed for prized. If anybody can remember this show, you may be my friend - instantly, at that.

...Two...One...Out

So the people in my life who are gradually turning 21 is starting to build up a bit quickly. In a weird way, my mind envisions it like a plague that makes the names fall like flies from the air. So many odd things about such an odd number. Although I think the act of celebrating a 21st birthday with lots of alcohol is a worn-out tradition, I'm sure I'll be imbibing my own share once mine comes, and I'm still happy enough to say it has been a great run with senor

Josh Kramer.

I dearly hope the day is great for ye. Happy birthday to one of the long-standing best friends.

Moneyzzz

Statistically, I wonder how much money is spent every year on workers sleeping during their shifts. I'm sure there are a grand amount of jobs out there that offer the opportunity for a worker to catch a few Z's here and there during their shift, and I would be very interested to know the total hours and total money spent. If anybody somehow found this information and sent it to me, I'd be pretty grateful.

Cedar Pee

It's absolutely disheartening to learn about stories of amusement parks using maximum fraudulent techniques to get people to spend money. For example, I was informed by somebody that really big places, such as Disneyworld, purposely waft manufactured scents throughout the grates underneath the park in order for people to smell them, get hungry, and go spend their money on food. The people are lead blindly by what they think is real - some sort of food shop nearby MUST be the origin - and then make the park even richer by purchasing their overpriced grub.

This technique is also commonly employed outside of amusement parks, where restaurants purposely vent their smells outside to attract customers. It's much the same ordeal, but it really sucks when that corporate spirit leaks into amusement parks. Those places really do seem to care for you as a young soul and harvest wondrous memories, until you get older and older and realize how it's all a plot.

Alas, the place needs to make money. It is a business, after all. It stinks though. Damn corporations.

Business Catch #1

I've got it! I've got it! Eureka!

I'll make a deal with Nike to invent (hopefully) the first series of pump-action push-up bras! And if not the first, who cares?! It's Nike. Ladies would wear them like sports bras. And then Nike could revive the deadened pump-shoes in a co-release and make double-bank off of a retro, slightly redesigned product.

Awexome.

Oh so Grand, the Rapids

So last night, while I was roiling about in a crowd of people I've never met, sponging up the bath of countless sweaty rivulets amassing together on my skin, mixed in with my own concoction of salt, water, and whatever the hell else is in there, I was thinking: "How many people probably touched me that have some strange disease? Owe some massive payment from debt? Just lost somebody close in the last month from death? Or even have some paper they need to write that they haven't started on?" I started thinking about the wildest things that would make somebody worried, angry, upset, confused, bitter...things people would sweat over, to use the phrase contextually. When the show was done and over with, I was a half wrung-out dish rag, and I wondered how many peoples' burdens of life I carried with me in the fabrics of my clothes. I wondered how many people had excreted those pains, along with their sweat, in joyous celebration of music they enjoyed, and left that place with just a little bit less of a reason to sweat. Of course, we were all in the same environment, so those people were inevitably caught in the same cycle as I was, and I equally transferred any of my own sweat onto them too. Thus, they equally carried along my sweat in their clothes.

The great thing with shows too is that you don't really get much opportunity to wash it all off until you get home. You ride along and the mixture of dog breath dances with your immediate memories. You play back the scenes from an hour or two before, over and over in your head, along with the hundreds or thousands of other people that are likely doing the same, and it all never really escapes you until the shower hits, and you're standing under a stream of refreshing water. No salt, no other chemicals: just straight water. Then you start to break away from the correlation of the other folk who plastered you in sweat. Then you are free to move on.

The power of live music is majestic. Curing. Persistent. Enthralling. Enlightening.

HxC

Tonight, I am going to Pontiac, MI to see three magnificent bands play: August Burns Red, Bring Me The Horizon, and Emarosa, all of whom have brand new or relatively new CD's that I have not yet heard live. Seeing new things with live music is an amazing feeling for me. New venues, new band members, new songs from bands I've already seen before...there are so many reasons that keep me going back. And I must say, it has been a while since I've been to a show with any edge. Good bands I've seen lately, but not nearly enough energy (minus Dan Deacon) as I like from crowds. Should be gooooooooooooood.

Ascension

Relatively close to what Othello said, "If I were to die today, I'd be most happy."

I went to Old Farm Shore discgolf park today in Kentwood. I played eighteen holes and got the best score of my life on that course (or any other course for that matter): six under (-6). I was extremely pleased with this, and am now more excited than ever for next year. I really hope I will follow through with playing in tournaments.

I'm also hoping that some disc golf park reviews will find themselves in my blog in the near future. Done by me, that is.

A whole new definition for "putting your money where your mouth is"

So I've been enlightened over the past year to this really obscure federal law that has been circulating around the...well...the arena of politics, I suppose. You'll have to pardon my absence of intelligible diction when it comes to these kind of things. I'll let you in on a secret: the classes that taught me that subject material went in one ear and out the other, for a simple letter grade. I'm a whore to the system.

ALAS! This bill, labeled S. 510, pertains to the freedom of farmers and "other people" to grow/distribute their own food to the public. Essentially, what I'm picking up from all of the summaries and jargon I've shuffled through, it would be nearly illegal (or possibly just that) for anybody to grow their own food unless they're approved and monitored by the FDA. That's the Food and Drug Administration, for anybody new to that term. Personally, when I see "FDA," it rings like any other lawful acronyms. FBI, CIA, other governmental administrations that I don't care about...it just sounds like another law-abiding authoritative figure. And THAT'S where the scary shit comes in play, though.

I like to hear about conspiracies. I'm not trying to make a tirade about how everything is out to get us US citizens, but at the same time, the belief that our government wants the best for each and every citizen sounds a bit phony to me. There are too many of us here for me to actually believe the law cares about our health and well being, and this here S. 510 bill would be the just epitome of that there conviction. The fact that this bill is hardly as easy to research on the internet than the more well-known bills of the United States' history's past could signify one of two things: either this bill is surrounded by an air of negativity from the various conspirators roaming on the internet (as most articles you will find read this bill in a negative manner) and was blown way out of proportion, or the government wants to cover something up, big time. Well, I'm sure there are far more reasons than just that as to why you can't find much about it, but I like to believe it gives my argument some weight.

Nonetheless, I like to play my cards safely in life. I like to assume the worst, and whenever I crack open a hearty can of Campbell's soup or peel back a fresh box of Cheez-Its, I'm pretty sure all of those ingredients added are not there for my own personal well-being, unless you're taking note of my palette. My mouth may like it, but my health probably doesn't. So what happens if all food administrators are controlled by the same company responsible for these ingredients? Just take a look at this site and maybe do a bit of reading for yourself.

http://www.theworldsprophecy.com/senate-bill-s510-makes-it-illegal-to-grow-share-trade-or-sell-homegrown-food/

It's right about now...

that I wish I were on the other side of the world. The diminishing daylight at earlier times is nothing but a saddening promise of the bitterness winter brings; the one season of them all where we must literally fight to survive. You can manage in the spring, summer, and fall, but winter brings conditions completely intolerable to our bodies.

Mentally too, management is a HUGE issue. Think there's a reason many people feel dismal in the winter? It's not science, it's just suck. Unless you've got something to keep you occupied out there, like snowboarding, winter straight up blows.

Thus, I wish I could have one of these for Christmas!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzVopxyadaY

Mudbloody Half-Truths

Today, my sister who lives in Mt. Pleasant is traveling down to Grand Rapids to get her hair done. Well, my half-sister, that is. Before my dad met my mom, he was married to a different lady, of whom he made most sensuous love and created a lass named Jill. The typical story ensues: they divorced, he met my mom, the goods in the woods, and finally, the origin of this post.

When I take the time to ponder it, it makes absolute sense as to why she is called my "half-sister." Half of her genetics, which flow just the same in my body, are interspersed with a half of somebody's who technically isn't related to me. It's in the math, it really is. But when my throat fails to exhale the "half-sister" claim whenever I introduce her or speak of her to anybody, I wonder, "Are the half of my genetics shared with her stepping up and laying the smack down on social and biological restraints which deem her half of mine? Or am I just too lazy to make that three-syllable claim unless somebody inquires further?" It really is a bitch having to say things like, "my half-sister..." or "guess what my ex-step-dad did?" Unless the term in question ends in "in-law," I'd hardly say any of these problems would persist if divorce wasn't such an issue anyways.

Blood is blood. It's all blue inside, red outside. Simple colors, undoubtedly, carry very little weight in an argument that a half-sister is still a full sister, but I suppose if I were a nineteenth century American civilian, I'd be right alongside the rest of the evil white men in claiming that every mulatto is just as much of a slave as a sun-baked Kenyan. To me, it's all just the same. I wish I could divulge more into this, and turn it into some literary journalistic piece embedded with great research, but I would hardly know what to start looking for. My knowledge, my scholastic endeavors, are far less tainted by science than they are the urge to express some perplexing and difficult, yet so blaring and obvious fact that I know full well to be true. Opinions, opinions, opinions, onions are white, onions are purple.

Where I am with school, although I absolutely despise various components of the education system, is where I'm certain I should be: studying writing. That's not a half-truth. A half-truth is me saying "school is the only way to make something bigger of your life." Statistics prove that people who graduate college are more "successful" in their endeavors. But "successful in their endeavors" doesn't always mean the Americanized, "let's go out and get a job and make lots of money!" All people don't aspire money.

I know that one of the most prominent subjects of our conversation with my "half-sister" today will be how I'm doing in school. I suppose, in my modernistic views, I think of a functioning family as one who asks these sort of questions and is honestly concerned and considerate of these aspects of another family member's life. I half-doubt that a half-sister could be half as much concerned. I know she fully cares, and that's just great! Go life.

Future Deeds

If I stepped into the future and came across the hard drive I save all of my homework assignments and papers on, copied them all onto another storage medium, brought that back to "current time," and turned them in as my own work, would it be considered plagiarism?

Web Sights

Have you ever walked around somewhere outside when you suddenly barge through a web-like strand, with no traceable origin? Like, completely away from any trees, buildings, or anything else a spider would likely hang around? I feel like it happens to me a lot. I will be looking in one direction while walking through a parking lot or an open field, we'll say, and a shimmering beam of light suddenly appears for a split second and then vanishes. Then, I feel the suction of its weightlessness cling to me but I can't get rid of it. I don't even know where the web is on my own body, let alone where the body is that made it.

That wasn't really supposed to evolve into anything too deep. I just wonder if that happens to other people too. Nonetheless, when I climbed into my car today after work, I once again ran into a web and I had no idea where it came from. However, with the plentiful planes about me, I doubted not the existence of a spider in my car. I drove back to Dutton (my hometown) without thinking anything of it, went to my favorite park to do some homework in the last echoes of summer, and then proceeded home after that. When I pulled into my neighborhood, the culprit climbed out from above my ceiling fabric and perused the windshield glass, scurrying about in what I assume was great confusion. I'd hope not though, considering it got itself into that mess to begin with (perhaps it would say the same about me when I got into my car).

 Anyways, when I got home, I found a napkin in my glove compartment and ushered the spider onto it, but not without much physical assertion. Once I got it out and set it on the ground, I looked over underneath the shadowed underbelly of my car to find an even bigger mess: my engine coolant/antifreeze is leaking like no other.

The spider scurried off, and I felt incredibly jealous. Have a good life not worrying about stupid shit like us humans, friend. Have a good life without any leaks. I hope...

The Cityscape; it takes, it takes...

I would have to say this weekend marked one of the most adventurous and memorable weekends of my life. Although it was enjoyable, I would classify it as "helter skelter," had Papa Roach not ruined that phrase for me. Thus, we'll just call it chaotic. But legitimately, I'm not just throwing that out there in absent-minded expression. This weekend is probably one that I'll attempt to write seriously about. It was crazy. But for now, midterms demand my attention far more than a homework-blog.

I went to Chicago this weekend to see some friends. I planned on taking the South Shore Line train from Michigan City, Indiana to Chicago because driving to and in Chicago is not only costly with gas, but also with tolls and occasional parking fees/fines you risk when taking a car. My friends don't really have a place to park cars at their apartment if you disregard the parking garage across the alley, which costs a good $17 for every 24 hours. Implicitly enough, train > car, in many ways than cost. Nonetheless, I left Grand Rapids at about 3:15, expecting to get to Michigan City by about 4:30 or so. Mind you, Michigan City is a two hour drive, but also mind yourself that it (and Chicago) observes the central time zone, so everything is an hour behind Grand Rapids.

So, I get to Michigan City by about 5:00, and since this is my first time ever taking a train by myself, not to mention my first time ever visiting Michigan City, I was pretty unfamiliar with what I needed to do as far as getting a ticket, where I would park my car, etc. Shit I probably shouldn't have been confused about because it was really simple, but "first time" is a rather confounding aspect for most things I do. Nonetheless, a train was leaving immediately when I got there, but that didn't seem like a big deal to me. From what I checked, there would be trains moving through that station all day, so I could just catch the next one in about 45 minutes or so.

Mistake #1

I have this weird tendency to consider Friday a weekend, since in my mind, staying up late with no school tomorrow when I just went to class today equates to weekend status. I was taken aback, then, when I asked the guy sitting in the waiting area if he knew when the next train would be coming, and he checked the Friday schedule to relay "8:30." Also mind you, the Michigan City South Shore Line train stations, plural because there are two of them in the same city, are very small, discrete, and when I was there at least, there were hardly any people around.

SO, this delay wasn't as bad as most people, I assume, would react. I had plenty of homework to do, plenty of silence around me, and three extra hours of assuredly productive time where I wouldn't be distracted by friends. I went back to my car, did homework for three hours, waited for the train, and boarded successfully around 8:30. It takes about two hours for the train to get from Michigan City to Chicago, but when I got on, the first car I chose had a very belligerent drunk man prattling away to the smug riders. I chose a different car instead because I didn't want to be interrupted while I was reading, but that damn man managed to permeate his influence through those suctioned doors. Within fifteen minutes of riding the train, we had to stop at the next station because the cops needed to be called in order to escort this man off the train, which turned into him probably resisting, where they then had to put him down on the ground and cuff him right next to the train. I didn't get to Chicago until a little after 11:00.

When I rode the city bus with my friends back to their apartment, I was so excited to see them that I was talking a bit louder than usual and was scolded by a fellow rider, an old lady, who looked back and wondered aloud in frustration why people needed to be so loud on a public bus. Because, you know, Chicago has quiet hours and all. HOWEVER, I must add, it's absolutely repugnant how clearly you can detect some peoples' "bubbles" when they ride a public bus in Chicago. I don't know if it was just me not used to being in a big city so much, but you could definitely tell when a person was overtly trying to avoid eye contact or the like in order to protect their little world from intruders. It's one thing, a very understandable thing I must add, to not be a social cat and not want people to talk to you. But it's pretty ridiculous, I think, when you overtly play the "city folk" role.

Nonetheless, not a whole lot could happen Friday night since I got there so late. Saturday morning swung around, and I immediately started working on homework when I awoke. While working on a paper, I was going to change the date and checked the computer's calendar to find out I was a tad bit incorrect with what day the 4th of October was.

Mistake #2

When I was waiting at the train station to board the train, up on the marquee, I noticed it said the train would be closed from 3am on the 2nd to 3am on the 4th. For some reason, I figured the 4th was Sunday and thought I was completely covered for getting a train ride back. However, the 4th was a Monday, so the train I planned on catching back on Sunday was a fancy thought. At first, I thought I was totally fucked, assuming somebody would need to drive over to Chicago (since my friends don't have cars and I don't know anybody else who lives in Chicago) and take me back to Michigan City so I could get my car. But luckily, I was saved by another friend who informed me over the phone that Amtrak also runs by Michigan City. I checked online and was thankful enough to have the opportunity revitalized, but the shitty part was that there were only two options: take the 7:30am train for $13, or take the noon bus for $22. Now, I'm no fan of church and all, but saving nine bucks in exchange for a few extra hours of sleep, which I technically wouldn't be spending with my friends while sleeping, was definitely worth it.

Thus, instead of letting all of the prospective time with my friends get eaten up by the public transportation system of Chicago, I just stayed up all night Saturday and slept zero hours. At 6:00 in the morning on Sunday, we were still up and all three of us took the bus to Union Station, I got on the train, and left Chicago to go back to Michigan City. Everything's kosher, yes?

WELL, the Amtrak station in Michigan City is entirely displaced from the two South Shore Line stations, so when I got off the train, with the minimal help the train conductor could provide me with, I was left to my own instincts to get me back to the SSL station. I first asked a nearby police department, then a local coffee shop, and finally a wandering woman when I realized I didn't specify WHICH train station I was looking for: the Carroll Ave. one, not the 11th St. one. Thus, when I got to the location everybody guided me, it was still the wrong place so I had to follow the tracks for miles until I got to the right place. Going off of no sleep, walking a good five or six miles around the city, then driving home for two hours...I was a tired lad. Immediate crash on bed when I get home, yes?

Nahhhhh. I decided to go disc golfing instead!

Good times, good times.

Kitty Balls

Hey! It's time for the exhausted Friday blog!

I was at my sister's house yesterday and she has this nearly-new kitten. It's awexome as hell, absolutely charming in its quirkiness, and even sleep-bites. Ridiculously cute. Its name is Dracula.

Dracula is getting fixed sometime soon. My sincere condolences are with him. Not just because of a mutual motivation to keep our balls intact, but because he has to deal with the stupidity and dominance of human power as much as I do. He can't say anything about it, and they're just going to cut his balls off, just like that. For the purpose of containing reproduction rates, sure, I get your point. It's quite logical. But COME ON! From my experience, any cat that still has his balls just seems to have more spunk, more edge. It's great. They run around all day. Here's an interestingly ironic, yet semi-unrelated lyric from the song "Prisoners of Today" by the band Billy Talent:

"My body's tired, my souls excited and i wish that i was gifted,
My body's tired my soul's excited and I wish I had some spunk,
She said "I wanna run, I wanna hide, and leave this place just like it left me"
"The only problem is I need to find the balls to follow through and that's the truth now..."

I think it's quite proven that when a man loses his balls, or begins to accrue a deficiency of testosterone, he begins to change. His attitudes and moods are completely swayed, and what difference would it make if a cat's balls were hacked off? Does a cat's hormones serve the same purpose as human hormones do? I would assume so...

I hate humans so much sometimes. I'm no animal activist, but to think we can just rip apart their attitudinal dispositions...maybe we aren't taking away their identity or anything. Sure, they still have dicks and vag. But I'll tell you what, I think human starvation/hunger rates determine that we should turn the gun around.

Hardy har! Phallic simbowlz blimpzy kissez inglish majur.