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.

Entitlement

So I don't know exactly how I want to structure this, but I think I'll start off with a bit of personal information, much like my last post.

I don't care much for smoking cigarettes. I've always been passionately, but quietly, against smoking cigarettes. I have my very thought-out rationality for thinking like that, but we'll leave that out. I have best friends that smoke cigarettes, and the most I would ever consider doing is making jokingly snide remarks about their imminent death. I'm not going to tell somebody what they should or should not do, partly because I know fully well that others would view me as a hypocrite, but also in part because I know fully well that I do a vast amount of "things" myself that would intrude on others' beliefs. People are meant to live their own lives and see things how they want to see them, and if they want to make change, they will ask for it or talk about it with whomever they feel comfortable with. Until then, people should keep their personal matters to themselves, partly out of respect, but mostly because we should all be a little more defensive of our rationality being challenged.

If you were to ask anybody you know that smokes cigarettes to explain their rationality of why they started, I'm willing to guess that most of them couldn't tell you since it was so long ago, or a simple "because." They just didn't have a reason for starting it. It's something that just happened, and they now do it. No thinking in between.

I let people smoke cigarettes in my car. I let people smoke cigarettes around me. In fact, I think the smell of a freshly opened pack of cigarettes smells delicious. Then again, I also think gasoline smells delicious, but NONETHELESS, I really don't blame anybody for picking up smoking if they said, "it seemed enticing to the senses." I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, but from what I've discerned, yeah...cigarettes do appease the senses and offer comfort. In fact AGAIN, I don't doubt that I would have smoked cigarettes myself if the situations in my life hadn't come around to make me think otherwise. I just had my own experience, and I fought through that experience myself.

If somebody were even to ask me to lend them a lighter so they could spark up a cigarette, I wouldn't hesitate. Perhaps I am technically "aiding" them in their endeavor to smoke cigarettes, but it's a common thing, a lighter is. The person is going to smoke that cigarette whether or not I give them a lighter. So let's all be friends here, yeah? The thing is, the only thing I really refuse to do is go up to a gas station and buy cigarettes for people. There's something about the monetary exchange that is so enabling for us to make things easier on ourselves. We are able to attain things without much questioning: where did this product come from? How was it made? What does it do that could hurt or help me? We don't need to ask those questions in most monetary exchanges, because the relationship between consumer and seller goes without question just as well. The seller gives you their product, you take it because you obviously want it, and that's it. You are gone, and mean nothing to them. It just happened "because it did," much like a lot of economics function.

Yes, I do buy all of my stuff from distributors that don't give a rat's ass about me. Here's where my hypocrisy shows through in one area. But I suppose I don't really feel any particular way about that stuff I buy. For cigarettes, I do have particular feelings so it's a completely different story. Thus, I don't feel like contributing to the notion of "just because" if I were to buy somebody cigarettes. Let alone the fact that I hear it enough from smokers when they warn, "Don't ever start! Smoking's horrible!", if they want to make the struggle to attain their "just because," I'll have them make that struggle by themselves.

However, inversely, here's where shit gets interesting. I have a friend who made a mistake. He accidentally got a girl pregnant, and neither of them want the kid - for now, at least. The pregnant girl already has one child, and despite that both of the parents are willing and wanting to get an abortion as soon as possible, it goes without saying that a female is free to change her mind with such matters. The only problem with "willing and wanting as soon as possible" is that my friend cannot accrue the necessary money until the thirteenth of October, and then after that, they have to worry about scheduling an appointment. To make a safe estimate, by the time the abortion can happen, the baby will probably be about three months along. Therefore, I don't blame my friend for being a little antsy, and wanting the procedure done as soon as possible. As the pregnant girl stated, the baby would have fingers and a heartbeat by then.

Tomorrow, which is Friday, the first of October, my friend said there is an available spot for this girl to go in and get an abortion. Obviously, not being the close to the thirteenth, my friend won't have the money. Knowing that I have a dependable portion of my own money stashed away, I jumped in and offered. I am paying for a large portion of my friend's abortion. Essentially, I am providing, for my friend, the abortion.

Now, I know there's a sea of pro-life people out there that find those words up there absolutely appalling. I'm sure there are people out there that would cringe in delight over the thought of taking me up by the ropes, cutting my windpipe open with a rusty pair of scissors, and railing my ass to pieces with dozens of expensive vacuum cleaner accessories as I squeak my way into atonement. Now, I don't think I see it as THAT bad when people smoke cigarettes. A far cry. But if you take my perspective of cigarettes and apply it to somebody who disagrees with abortion, it would be just like if I gave a person money to go buy cigarettes themselves. "I wasn't the final link in the chain, from cigarette distributor to cigarette consumer, so therefore, I wouldn't be guilty. I just gave him the money and he was free to spend it on whatever he wanted. I just happened to know he was one cigarette away from needing a new box. That's all."

And in fact, I won't be there on Friday if and when the abortion happens. I will be riding along to Chicago to see some of my friends. Would it be any different if I were asked to stay in the clinic with them while it happened? I answer you: no. Would it be any different if that money were given to me, and I was the one performing the abortion, and giving a product to this pregnant girl, which are my services? I answer you: maybe. I don't honestly know if I could ever gather up the heart to perform abortions myself. Perhaps my whole beliefs about abortion are all bent to hell from displacement and disposition. But I'll tell you this: I think I would be more emotionally bothered if I were to puff on a cigarette for my very first time tomorrow than I know I will be while riding, happily, I might add, on that train tomorrow to Chicago.

Yes, a potential life is ending because of me. And yes, in many ways, I should probably flat out tell my friend, "You're a fucking idiot. Either you wait until you have enough money yourself, or suffer the consequences." This is the second time he's made this mistake, after all. And I mean, that would adhere to my previous remarks about wanting people to fight through situations like this for themselves, wouldn't it? That whole "no interference" thing I was talking about? He didn't even think about asking me for any money. I offered that on my own whim, with no instigation but my own will.

Everything that happened to create this death-row baby was done from "just because." There was alcohol involved, and as controversial of an element that alcohol can be in figuring out motivation (drunk words are sober thoughts, they say), these two parents don't love each other. Their act was simply out of lust. Lust and bad or misdirected decisions. They don't want to be together at all. Their families hate each other, she already has one child, she currently has a boyfriend, and he doesn't want any children at all. I'm not joking when I say that my friend and I pretty much have a pact going between us to go get our balls snipped when we're 25. He does not want this kid.

When a child grows older, they begin to observe and analyze things a lot more carefully. They ask questions. "What was this put here for?" "Why do those things do that?" And that other one, which any adult even has no idea the answer to, "Why am I here?" Some people decide to tell their kids the straight-forward truth to answers. Some people decide to fudge up some things to defend the "innocent little ears" until an appropriate age is reached. Regardless of tact, I think common sense points toward "just because" as a horrible answer to an inquisitive child.

There is nothing saying you can't build a life around "just because." After all, I think we are all products of a huge "just because." We live in its threads, and accept a lot more things than we think without question. Some of us might understand this, and some of us might not, but depending on our specific characteristics, humans adapt to each other and adapt to the ideas or questions that are better left unspoken. When people are called out on a "just because" with no defensive answer in mind, they are caught in extreme discomfort.

It's a rather dismal thought indeed to think of everything as a "just because," and what kid wants to hear that? I sure didn't like learning that all humans die when I was a kid. It's better off to hold tight and wait until you have a well thought-out, defensive answer if a child asks, "Why am I here?" Because in the moment when that child asks you, you're trapped. Comically, you can imagine the scenario: "Wait a minute, is that my car alarm? Gotta' go check!" *darts out the front door, leaving other parent and child alone* But even then, what of the innumerable cigarette butts scattered upon the earth? Although you don't need to deal with them yourself, something else, some other force, must take care of them. You can't just drop a child like you can drop a cigarette after it is born.

Maybe my life is a hypocritical swirl in the abyss of "just because" I find myself surrounded in, but I sure as hell don't wish for my friend's life to be overcome with the pain of forcefully pushing himself through boundaries in desperate search for answers and for a solution. If he does that, he could very well miss the mark completely. He needs to fight through it for himself, but I don't think many people see that common statement for what it really is: everybody needs just a little help.

Tomorrow, I'm killing a baby.

Life ^ (-1)

So here's a segment of some semi-personal information from my life that I find pretty humorous:

I have an ex-step-dad. His name is Frank. He divorced my mom in 2006 because of slight marital complications, but mostly because he couldn't tolerate living under the same roof as me. I was largely the reason they got divorced. Frank stepped into my life when I was about three or four, with a few people in my family claiming that "he was more of a father to you than your own." I tend to disagree with this.

After the divorce, my mom and Frank remained the closest of friends, and now you could find them acting in much the same way they would before 2006. Yes, I'm saying that four years after the divorce, my mom and ex-step-dad are practically in love again. And although he isn't such an intolerable person now that him and I aren't residing in close proximity to each other (he currently resides in an apartment complex well beyond my school district), my experience with him from about 1994 - 2006 was absolute hell. Perhaps I was just being a child in a few instances, perhaps not. That doesn't matter. The bitter truth is, no matter how much effort we both contributed to make amends, we always loathed the presence of each other.

Frank has a friend named Ron who lives in Florida. Ron is very wealthy, and often, he likes to accomplish his good deed of the year by flying Frank down to Florida. Frank wasn't ever wealthy himself, being on disability for the greater portion of my memory with him, so the opportunity for him to take vacations were few and far between. He pretty much had "up north" (his parents owned a cabin near Lincoln Lake that he often enjoyed retreating to when he was too pissed off and wanted to fish) or Florida. Those were the two biggest reasons Frank would ever leave the house for more than a half-day, since he didn't have a job.

Thus, when these vacation opportunities arose for him, my mind went into party-mode. The amount of happiness and relief I felt with him being gone and out of my hair for any small amount of time, leaving me free to play my video games and watch TV unburdened, to stay up well past my established bed time (when I knew I was old enough to disregard it), and to speak my mind how I saw things was tenfold the relief of answering the last question of the last exam of your last college school year. I absolutely loved it when he was gone.

So NOW, in 2010, well beyond those moments in the past, I live alone with my mom in the same house that we moved into after the divorce. I love my mom, I really do, but if there's any one statement I can make about her at the top of my head: most annoying person ever. Perhaps that is just because I have to see her everyday at the same frequency I saw Frank, since she is also on disability. Perhaps not. But now, since Frank lives in his own apartment complex away from my house, my mom frequently goes over to his place, watches movies, eats dinner, and does whatever two divorced people in love with their divorcee do. Right about here is where people can and often do start cracking jokes, but they phase me none. At least it gets the woman out of my hair, and I have plenty of hair to get tangled up in.

So here's the funny part. My mom informed me yesterday that Frank is flying out to Florida this coming weekend to visit Ron and go to the racetrack. He will be gone the entire weekend. Thus, my mom asked, "do you have any clothes you need sewn up? Since Frank's going to be gone all weekend, I'm going to be stuck at the house with nothing to do." And right about here is the place where I would admit, if I firmly believed in the concept, that I'm going hell. Because as nice of a gesture that we can all see that as, I could only think, Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Why do you have to leeeeeeave, Frank?

Too damn variant. Damn you, life. Once again...

Sorry About The News; I'll Take The Shoes

If anybody were to use death as a symbolic representation of "bad," polarized as a negative factor of existence, I would scoff. Death can't be coined as good or bad anymore because, at least with my experience of human thought, there are far too many stipulations tied to the whole idea of death. Quite obviously, good or bad is relative. Take any one death, under any given scenario, and you will have infinite outlets of perception tied to it that render the effort of such analysis completely obsolete. We are trained to believe humans' instinctual gravitation toward survival as solid proof that death is bad. But what of the suicide victim who wishes to die? What of the miserable mother-in-law who fades away in her emphysemic bed while the ridiculed son-in-law sits close by? Will her suffering yield ample atonement? "The only good cat's a dead cat," they sometimes say. What if she has assets?

Our minds are also tossed around between sharp divides of expected mannerisms and reactions to death. Some people believe that mourning is a sacred process of getting over it. Some people settle for the "you should be happy because he's in a better place" approach. Regardless of how you act, it all reflects your personal opinions of that particular death.

But symbols aren't meant for encompassing personal opinions. Symbols are meant to generalize an idea that is applicable for all cases. Like in mathematics, which revolves around a slew of symbols, for something to be valid and true, it must be true for all cases. So essentially, do our thoughts and feelings, which we express in the most animated displays of gestures, symbols, and actions, all equate to some mathematical value that identifies how consistent each of us individual people are with defining our beliefs?

For instance, last night at midnight, one of my best friends (Zach) who now lives in Chicago and who I have been referring to in the last couple posts about Chicago, randomly called me up and said, "What are you doing tonight and only tonight? I'm in town because I have to attend a funeral tomorrow." Bam. Just like that, my sentiments of my last Friday-post were appeased. Zach's great uncle died so he had to attend a funeral in Michigan, which allowed him to show up in town. I was more than overjoyed about this. I stayed up with him and my friend Ethan until 4:30 in the morning when I had to be up by about 8:30. It was, to say the least, a really good thing.

So, essentially, what I'm saying is that I'm partially happy Zach's great uncle died. Yeah, I'm not happy that another soul who meant something important to people passed away, but the effect of it, which caused Zach's presence in Caledonia, was more than satisfying for me. But trying to analyze how my joy is caused more because of the "secondary" effects versus "direct" effects of the indident, in my opinion, is pointless. A death happened, and I feel a certain way about it. One way only. Yes, in that emotion that I am feeling can be a great blend of various thoughts, opinions, and emotions that makes it seem like I feel many ways at once. But truly, when I say "Zach's great uncle died," I feel ONE way about it. And in my personalized situation, the consistency of that feeling is much more happiness than dread.

So let's let the "death equation" be y = ax + b, where y is my emotional value, with positive numbers being "good" or happy, and negative numbers being "bad" or distraught. If we let a = my proximity to the deceased, x = my current emotional disposition, and b = how long I've known ther person...you get what I'm saying (hopefully).

Things are just too variant. I sure hope I didn't make myself sound like a complete idiot by writing this stuff.