2 fools...no, theres 3.

Once in a while my friends actually forward me some funny stuff. These guys have been making it around the internet in high volume for the past few weeks now. Anyway, just thought I'd pass it along since its definitely improved teh qulity of my life this week...lol. They have their own site too which is linked on that page below...too bad I can't read it. Anyway, just thought I'd share.

http://www.tian.cc/2005/10/asian-backstreet-boys.html

Oh and Happy Halloween guys!

Regret....

I've often thought it was an interesting concept.

A dictonary might define it as...

"1. A sense of loss and longing for someone or something gone.
2. A feeling of disappointment or distress about something that one wishes could be different."

Its almost an entire emotion by itself, apart from happy or sad or mad...its quite a distinct feeling in fact. The longer one lives the more chances he or she will have to make a choice and regret it later. Still, if we live our lives trying to avoid it, inevitably it will find us. I'll write more about it at some later time...I think Regret really is an idea that is intriguing. For now, enjoy a kick ass song from my high school years of the same name - "Regret" by New Order (courtesy of videocodezone). (Its in the sidebar)

As you may have noticed this is my first post in a while that isn't a common topic post with my buddies....I hope to keep more coming. Also as you may have noticed, I'm "featuring" a new video every so often in the sidebar. Kanye West's "Gold Digger" was the last one, and Aha's classic "Take on Me" was before that. Anyway, I'll try to change it up every so often.

Precious, fragile

This week's topic was vaguely set by yours truly as things that are both Precious and Fragile. It was actually inspired in part by a new song from an old group....Precious by Depeche Mode. I first heard it on a one of my favorite guilty pleasures...i mean...shows (Smallville) a few weeks ago. The song was good and got me thinking about what I hold dear that is fragile.

Somethings in this world are fragile, plain and simple. They break easily. Many of these things are also precious. And many of these things are precious in part because they are "fragile" per se. Delicate heirloom quality china stowed away in padded pacakging for instance ... a rookie card of some hall of famer delicately preserved in plastic. Precious and fragile things need special handling.

The same can be said of less concrete things we hold precious and dear to us. Sometimes they are fragile too. For instance, sometimes we put people up on a pedestal. We hold them so highly that they can even exemplify the quality that we admired about them in the first place (or more likley just a kind of person). Its almost like we hold these people as ideals. And because these are ideals...the thing that is fragile is the perfection and exemplification of these ideals. If it wasn't so easy to ruin this perfection, then we might not hold the ideal (or kind of person) so highly. Parallels anyone? Anyway, just one incident straying from this can shatter that precious conception of this person and perhaps to a lesser or greater extent our beleif in that achievable ideal in the first place.

We find these people in all areas of our life. Sometimes we don't even know we feel this way about these people until something does happen...and they most surely don't usually know we put them on a pedestal. The fact is we do though. Who knows? You may be just that person for someone else. This should give us extra motivation to have the courage of our own convictions and be a good example for others. You never know who is putting you up there. Be yourself and stand firm for those things you know are good things about yourself. You can be a personal hero without even knowing it.

A Moment in time in the lives of young people...

Ok, so this week's "blog buddies" piece was to be either a story, a writing about time or a funny story... Below is a short piece written in a narrative voice by yours truly telling the story of only a few moments in time in the lives of two young adults. ***Forgive me if the writing is a bit 7th grade and the topic a bit tired***

Time. He felt as if it was running out. He could not see the second hand of his watch ticking its way around but nevertheless he could feel its presence like prey can feel its predator looming near, bearing down, setting up for the sure kill. You see, he had just met her. Her, or his near perfect her or so you had imagined only seconds ago. He knew nothing about her except they had a common friend and she was in his opinion radiantly attractive. Tick, tick, tick. . . The usual hellos, greetings and small talk transpired in the loud dark arena and the sentences were sometimes shouted as the remixed pop music “bumpin” from the sound system seemed to make a great void of the couple inches from his mouth to her ear or from her mouth to his. Time. He again became acutely aware of it. Even the rhythmic beat of the music seemed to count the time running out. He was well aware that the time to make not just a good first impression but a distinctly non harmless and male one was brief … just a few moments in time compared to the hours spent out that night. THESE few moments in fact. Its been said that a man takes just seconds to decide whether or not they’d even consider ever “being” with a particular woman. His very presence for several minutes here and his telling eyes give him away that she fell into either the “yes” or “maybe” bins of that question that’s answered in those precious few seconds. Tick Tick tick. He realized he hadn’t thought this much about time in a long time. Still, for all the pressure that these thoughts had just caused, as the seconds did take away, he began to relax if only a little. She was still here.

Time was of the essence she thought. It wasn’t too long before she realized that she had spent a bit of time talking to him. She did not quite know what to make of him yet….she needed more time to figure it out. What did this guy want? He had not made the usual kind of forward advances that just earlier in the night she had the occasion of politely fending off. Still, some actions and mannerisms of his felt to her not the type of the decidedly uninterested. She thought again about time as more of it had passed. It was then that she decided best to go find her friends and figure things out later, as in the end…time will answer her question anyway…not that she knew if she really cared or not. As she found her friends moments later, time had wiped the curiosity out of her mind…for the time being at least…

Politics, politics.....people people...

There are going to be times when I step outside my realm of knowledge a bit...excuse me if this is one of those times...

Tommy picked "Political issues" as the topic of the week…

So what do I have to say about it? At first I was thinking “anything can be a political issue!” What am I supposed to write about? There are so many things I could write about. Then I got to thinking, “I don’t know crap about political issues.” Then I thought of politicians and my impressions of them. That writing would have ended up just being a rant. And anyone can rant about how this should be done that way or this way. So I realize, what I really feel about politics is that I’m emotionally and mostly intellectually removed from it. I find myself ignoring stores in the news. I then asked myself why.

I quickly came to realize that its more then one thing. First, its the people. How many times in the past year have we heard about shady dealings with campaign financing? How many times have politicians shown favor to corporations or people that don’t deserver it? Particularly I’m thinking corporations that have political ties that have been found to have shady dealings and people that just aren’t qualified but happen to be in office for “political reasons” mostly. These are just two types of the many things that politicians do but shouldn’t. For instance, how many times have we heard about politicians missing the vote on an issue they would later or had already campaigned on? Its downright shameful. If I showed up to work the percentage of days these guys do I’d be fired. As I thought about all this I came a couple different thoughts. One is that, we as citizens vote these politicians into office to represent ourselves. Clearly, there are countless cases where politicians aren’t doing what we the citizens should want them to do. They should be fighting our fight. We have elected them to represent us, and they should be looking out for our best interest…after all, our taxes pay their salaries, no? So in a sense, we our their bosses. BUT, in most cases the salary made is but a fraction of the compensation a representative gets. Wealthy special interest groups and corporations and even wealthy individuals seem to supply the rest – which is probably more then joe or jane taxpayer ever contributed to the representative’s way of life. That’s what gets me to my second thought. The system is screwed up. I’m spending all my time hating the player when I should be hating the game so to speak. We have a system that allows for this, almost begs for it to be the driving factor in the way a representative will vote.

So then the question comes up: How do we affect change to the system? The system can only be changed from within the system. In short, bills need to be voted on for much to change. How do we get these things voted on the way we want them to be voted on?

One way is by we the people, voting for people who we really believe in, or at least the lesser or least of 2 or more evils. We have the power to decide the “political future” career of any politician in our voting power. Another is letting your feelings on issues be heard. Letter writing campaigns, peaceful demonstrations and the like can sway a politician. Hey, they aren’t all 100% evil. :-P Whether or not that will win over the perks special interest group lobbyists can provide or not is entirely up to the kind of people we put in there in the first place. Media exposure of undeniable facts and records will also keep a politician honest, so journalists have that responsibility on their shoulders (and in the same vane, we should voice our opinions by not buy clearly “bought” publications). Its been shown some people can have debates against themselves if you cut the footage the right way. Showing contradictory rhetoric is powerful. We may not all be media savvy but hey, the day of the personal publisher is upon us. Look at the blog phenomenon as proof.

So after this thought exercise I come away with this. Those of us we have been disenchanted with politics (like me) because of politicians or politics should gather ourselves and be more socially responsible citizens by being aware and making our voices heard. Together we may be able to change the system. We can’t let our politicians pilot this country without the proper input (dukes of hazard town hall hearing scene comes to mind….for anyone that has seen the horrible movie…they probably know what I mean). Its irresponsible and gives us exactly what we don’t want...the ugly ramifications of rampant greed out of control. So, what do we come to at the end of all this? Basically it comes down to "It's on us to change things"