10 posts from April 2008

For years and years now I've been an atheist, going to church for family events just so my mother doesn't get upset, and mumbling out prayers to beings that I don't think exist.  Then I started reading about Buddhism, and realized that I already believe in many of its core ideas, so I read up more.  I liked what I read about the causes of suffering, how to avoid suffering, and how the medical community has conclusive studies proving meditation is pretty goddamn awesome.  Then I got to the part about "Rebirth"...

I don't believe in life after death or in purgatory-like states.  I believe that Buddhism is a way to improve yourself in this, your only life.  However Buddha preached about many planes of existence where your mind may spend time after you die, where gods and demons abound, and that after intense meditation he could recall his previous lives.  This is really the only disagreement I have with the Buddhist canon.

I've talked to a friend of mine who's a history major and he tells me that I cannot claim to be Buddhist without believing in everything they say, and I fired back by asking him if his views coincide exactly with what the Vatican tells him is right, which shut him up, but I still wonder, can I claim to be Buddhist without believing everything taught?

My current view is this:  The people who preach this have had experiences similar to those before them, and that is why they teach this.  If so many people preach this, there has to be some link, whether or not intense meditation or desire caused hallucinations, there is still a link.  I can follow the rest of the teachings, and if I have an experience that lends credence to the other things, I can believe that too, if not, then I know it was because Siddhartha was raised in a religion that taught those things, and they arose in his subconscious while meditating.

Logically does my current stance hold?  Can I call myself a Buddhist or not?

I watched the Daily Show tonight, and I was, once again, astounded by something incredibly stupid that an elected official said.  In this case, it was an old republican congressmen.  The topic was sex education, and the respected congressman said (something similar to) the following:

     "Isn't it rather elitist to presume that the supposed experts and professionals who have studied this matter know           how to teach our kids better than our parents?"

I sat stunned that someone would spout this off on national TV as an elected official of what is supposed to be the greatest country on earth.

It comes down to "Isn't it elitist to think that the people who are admittedly smarter than us know how to do things better?"

The answer of course is FUCK YES AND ITS A GODDAMN GOOD THING.

Do you think your doctor knows how to take care of you better than you?  You better hope so.  Do you think the people you vote for know how to run things better tan you?  I hope so, or why are you voting for them.

Elitism is not an inherently bad thing, especially if there are reasons behind it.  For example, Abstinence Education has wasted 1.3 Billion dollars on something that the experts said wouldn't work, and lo and behold, it didn't work.  Experts are called experts for a reason, they have specialized to the point where they are, in fact, better than you, at least where it comes to their area of expertise, be it your body, your kids, the environment.

Still, this is only the 2nd stupidest thing I've heard a member of our government say today.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did an interview where he was asked if torture fell under "cruel or unusual punishment."  I saw this and expected... well, something about the changing times, or how its necessary, or some other bullshit he's concocted in order to live with himself.  Instead, he sat and thought, and looked up and said "Well, has anyone ever said torture is punishment?"  Torture isn't punishment?  Torture isn't punishment?!  It may be cruel and unusual, but its not protected under our constitution because it isn't punishment!?  I'd never even considered that someone might believe that torture isn't punishment.  How is it not punishment?  They've been bad or been planning something bad, and so you hurt them!  Thats what punishment is, ask any third grader.

There should be a third grader on the supreme court, he can't cast a vote on anything, he would only be on for a few years, but if any of the justices utter something so stupid that even the third grader says "WTF!?" the third grader gets to kick that justice off the court.

On a slightly related note, I think I kinda save up all my anger and aggression, because I'm of the view that 90% of the time, its not worth getting worked up over, but eventually I reach a point where it starts spilling out and getting so worked up over something rather insignificant is the result.  I'm still not backing down over the whole "remember your keys" thing, but its nice to know how my mind works in cases like this.

So currently I have the douchebag roommate (freshman) and two cool roommates (juniors like me).  Well one of them, the Irish one, and I got in a little spat due to last night.  Heres the scoop.

He goes out around 10 with his friend after Lost and getting all dressed up.
He drunk dials me around 2 as its pouring out and he's looking for a way home, I tell him to call a cab, and we hang up.  I remember something and immediately text him "You better not have forgot your fucking keys again..."
He texts me around 2.30 "Whats the number for XXXXX cab?"  I wake up, get out of bed, go to my computer to look it up and send the number to him.
At 3.00 I get woken up again by pounding on the front door.  He fucking forgot his keys again.  So I go and let him in, but I'm angry.

FLASHBACK:
In the past, I've answered his calls/texts for the exact same cab number 3 times.
In the past, I've been woken up by his loud knocking (I'm the only one on the ground level) because he forgot his keys 4 times.

Now I'm usually pretty easy going, most things just aren't worth getting upset over, but he woke me up 3 times last night for things he shouldn't have needed.  I don't get angry often, but I was angry.

SO I calmly told him that if he asks me for that cab number again, I'm not giving it to him, so he should put it in his phone, and that if he locks himself out again and I'm asleep, I'm not opening the door for him.  He kinda freaks out and starts talking louder and faster, trying to tell me to man up and accept it, that it was an accident, trying to argue me out of it, I just kept on telling him that I wasn't going to let him in, that remembering your keys isn't that hard.

Personally I think he purposely leaves them behind, as he doesn't like carrying them around.  He usually doesn't forget stuff, and the only times I've ever had to let him in has been when he's been out drinking.

And asking him to remember it isn't really all that much, May 19th he's leaving to study abroad in Ireland for the summer, and he won't be going out much with exams coming up, so basically I'm telling him "If you can't remember to take your keys with you when you go out (possibly 3 times?) for the next few weeks, you get to sleep outside."

I don't think he thinks I'm serious.  I deal with the bills, with the landlord, I lent my TV for the main room where everyone else has their own, I run the router and do tech support, I keep the common areas vacuumed, I rarely use the common trash and dishes, but I still take it out and empty the dishwasher.  I go out to the bars with people when they need it, even if i have other stuff to do or would like to stay home, I'm the one who listens when people bitch about their day or about a test, or when they're in an academic mood and want to talk about the line of scottish kings for half an hour (who cares?).  I help them with math and science homework, I listen to their women troubles, I walk with them to the liquor store so they don't have to walk alone, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna back down on this.

So I went away for awhile and now am back and it appears that the posting page has changed quite a bit.  I'm using a decked out version of the Firefox 3 Beta Release 5 right now, so that might have something to do with it, but I'm getting pissed trying to put pictures in my posts.

In my post on the primary in Penn. I had a few pictures of the website to go with the rants, but I would try to insert them when I reached the appropriate place while typing.  So I would upload it, insert it, but instead of going where my cursor was, it would get put at the top of the post.  wtf vox?

So after writing a nice long (better) post on the primary and how the news handles them, I tried to insert the pictures and drag them around to the appropriate place.  Well that just fucked things up.  The non-expanding writing box here is too small to drag them to the right place in one try, and I somehow ended up dragging a copy of the picture out its little presentation box and have it sit directly amidst the text, complete with word-wrap and resizing tabs, which I'VE never seen before.  Is that something new?

Anyways, I deleted those copies and continued my attempts to drag them to the right spot, but I accidentally double clicked one.  Well that turned the text entry area into what appeared to be a whole new browsing window, as it opened up as if one clicked the picture on my actual blog.

I clicked in it and hit backspace to perform a "Back" function, and yeah, all I had wrote was lost.  ARGH!

That contributed to the angry tone in the post, whoops.

Anyone else have anything like this happen or is it just me and my oddly modded system here?

The media's coverage of primaries is just horrible.

First they tell have this big countdown timer on the screen to tell us when the poll closes.  As if thats important, because when the polls close, no one knows anything.  All you have is questions asked of people as they leave, and nothing is making those people tell the truth about how they voted.  If someone asked me I'd lie and tell them to go fuck themselves because "Exit Polls" are the biggest waste of our time right after wondering if Obama scratching his face on the ABC debate was his subtle way of giving Clinton the finger.

Then they get the first batch of results in.  How many votes in the first batch?  Twenty five hundred.  2500.  Approximatly 0% of Pennsylvania has reported in.  Hillary was winning 67% to 33% at 2500 votes.  Twenty five hundred votes reported and this is "breaking news."  Twenty five hundred votes mean nothing.  You can't call a winner, you can't even tell if someone stands a good chance of winning.  I could get 2500 students to vote for Jesus this fall as a gag, is anyone going to report this as breaking news and say "Jesus currently in the lead, but its too early to tell, way too early to tell,"?

They get the second batch of results in.  Now they're at three percent of all of Pennsylvania, with Hillary at 55% and Obama at 45%.  A little better, thats enough to make a "breaking news" headline, but what do those sensationalizing bastards do?  With three percent (3%) of the vote in, they call a winner.  "BREAKING NEWS:  HILLARY PROJECTED AS WINNER!"  You know what you can do with 3% of the vote in?  You can say "Three percent of the vote is in."  End of story.  Calling a winner with three percent of the vote in is the equivalent of me looking at a few square inches of skin on the untouched backside of a burn victim and determing that the person is in perfect health.  I don't care that Hillary had been polling well, we know that doesn't matter, just ask John Kerry.

Now they've gotten like the sixth batch of results in, they're at 13% of the districts reporting, and I am laughing.  Hillary stands at 52% and Obama at 48%.  Apparently someone realized that "Hey, this race is closer than we thought, lets not project a winner this early and be wrong later," because they took down the "Breaking News:  Hillary Projected as Winner!"  banner. 

Personally, as long as its a close race, I'm happy.  Obama is in the lead right now, and even if the rest of the race is split 50-50 in who gets what, Obama still comes out on top, which is what I want.

My new camera shipped today!  My old one's shutter broke, but I waited till I had some birthday money, and did some research.  I really only wanted a point and shoot camera that took some decent pictures and could fit in my pocket.  After some research, and price comparisons, I ended up picking this baby:

30-120-196-TS

The Canon Powershot SD750 Silver.  I even paid for 2nd day shipping, so within the next couple days!

So this is a story from a few weeks ago of something I probably shouldn't have done.  Am I a jerk for doing this or is it her fault too, and how much should I blame myself?

So some of our neighbors have problems with each other, and one of the girls moved to a diff. apt. at semester because she couldn't stand her roommates anymore (drugs, dirty...etc...).  We used to hang out about once a week as a group when she lived with them, but once she moved out everyone stopped hanging out.

We were talking online and she really wanted to hang out, I kinda wanted to see her again, so said sure, whatever, and she came over. I put in Independence Day before she arrived. She sat down right next to me on the big couch and didn't take her long to sort of lean into me and try to tickle/poke me.

Now the timeline for the last time I even a kissed a girl is pretty long and pretty sad, and I was mildly intoxicated from losing in beerpong, this is where I probably made my first mistake.

I tickled and poked back but instead of leaning away from me like expected, she's leaning into me, basically curling up in my arms.  "OK," I thought, "I have this mildly attractive girl here who basically won't move away from me, what do I do?"  So I put my arm around her.

We watch the movie for a little while like that, making small talk, nothing serious.  She adjusts herself and I use this opportunity to pull away a bit, though my arm is still out, its now that my hand is near the back of her neck and not my arm. After a few minutes she looks like she's about to readjust herself so she can lean into me again, so my hand shoots out and starts massaging where the spine meets the skull.

She's clearly enjoying this and used some feminine wiles to get me to agree to a back massage and cracking... the details are unimportant, but suffice to say my skills in this area are more than sufficient.

Now the whole time this is going on, I have one thought running through my head.  It starts out kind of excited with "I have a girl here who is quickly becoming puddy in my hands..." and ends with a rather frightening "... but she has a boyfriend who happens to be out of town tonight."

One of us suggests to play a quick game of beerpong, I don't remember who.  I won, but it was close.  The movie is still playing, so we go back to watching that.  I sit down first again, in my same corner of the couch, leaning into it, and she plops right down next to me and leans up into me again.

At this point I realize that I'm not attracted to her in any way except "I haven't gotten anything in awhile and there's an attractive girl laying against me."  Now sadly, this is a fairly rare occurence for me.  Being somewhat out of practice and knowing that nothing could happen between us (as she's been with this bf for awhile),  I decided to try out some things I hadn't used in awhile and some new things I had heard about.

The first thing I tried was lightly drawing circles and lines...etc... up and down her arm.  I'd heard this drives women wild.  Up the arm fast and light, around the neck and swooping up towards the ear slightly slower and heavier...etc...  Well after a few minutes of this, she went from leaning into me to basically laying across my lap and her face was getting all flush, her breathing heavy... signs that it was working.

My thinking got even fuzzier at this point.  Somehow I got the mischevious idea that I would get her all worked up and then send her home, and that it was a good idea.

I expanded my area of touching to include an exposed stomach.

This intensified her reactions, she wasn't even watching the movie now, her eyes were closed.

Wondering how far lost in the moment she was, I ran a little test.  I took one hand and repeated what I had been doing to her arms and did it to the thighs of her jeans, and lo and behold, her legs which had been pressed tightly together opened up.  

Rather amazed at such a simple tactic working this well and deciding that she should probably leave before I make any more questionable decisions, I stop, and whisper "You have a boyfriend, you should probably go."

At this point my understanding of women fails me.  She leaned up and kissed me.

What the f*#%?  Anyone?  Reasoning here?  Explanation?

Back to the events... well, it'd been an ungodly long time since I'd kissed anyone, and at first I was more shocked than anything.  Then all the loneliness that inevitably builds up over such a long time without such a fundamental human touch threw sensibility out the window.  We ended up fooling around just a bit before my senses returned and I realized that this was wrong.  I stopped everything and told her she should leave now.

She asked me to look up a bus schedule for her (we're college students, no one is paying for an f-ing cab).  So I look it up on a computer in my room while she stands in the doorway.  She has about 10 minutes to spare before she has to catch the bus.  I stand up and am going to show her to the door thinking she wouldn't want to wait it out with the guy who was messing with her, the girl with the boyfriend, but no, she throws her arms around me and slowly pushes me back atop my bed, so she's laying on top of me.  I just lay there not really saying anything, and eventually she says "Being horizontal can't be a good thing for us can it."  "Probably not."  Then she got up and left.

My personal thoughts on this are that I didn't initiate anything improper, and was trying to stop it from progressing farther, but yet I didn't do what I should have (which was do nothing).

How much at fault am I?  I feel like an asshole, I never wanted to be "that guy" that broke up a happy couple.

This weekend, after many long long years, and then many more long long months of being the only one in the house thats NOT twenty one and therefore of legal drinking age, I finally am 21!

Two of my roommates (the nice ones) turned in August, and have been enjoying the bars for awhile now, and my 4th ACTUAL roommate (who is studying abroad in england right now) turned in January before he left, so for the last few months I've gotten to enjoy the feeling of having a few drinks, then watching as they left to go out to the bars to have a good time while I get to stay with the subletter freshman and his foolish friends.

So my birthday was last friday, the 18th, and on the thursday night earlier, I had a test in Liner Signals and Systems (for those of you in the know, it was fourier series and transforms... a bitch of a topic) at 7:15 pm.  So I spent all day studying with my fellow students.  I was talking to some air force rotc guys who were in the class, and they said they were going out drinking that night, and when I mentioned that I was turning 21 at midnight, they convinced me to go out.  So I went out to a few of the more popular campus bars with them and some friends

DRINKS:
1.  2 1/2 Miller Lites
2.  Three Wise Men
3.  Jagerbomb
4.  Shot of Wild Turkey Whiskey
5.  Landshark (Jimmy Buffet version of Corona)
6.  Bud Light

So I only felt mildly nautious all next day as punishment.

Then comes the actual going-out of my birthday.  At 7 we head to the Nitty Gritty where I've invited a bunch of friends to eat and meet before we all go out drinking in my honor.  Even my married friend showed up (who is naming his upcoming baby girl Peyton... is it just me, or is that a little weird?).  So while we were waiting for people to show up and eating I had three beers.  After we finished eating, we bought some drinks downstairs, then went out to 3 more bars.

Drinks at the Nitty Gritty:
1.  2 x Guiness
2.  Miller Lite
3.  Shot of Oatmeal Cookie
4.  Guiness
5.  Shot of Liquid Cocaine
6.  Irish Car Bomb

Then we went to a few more bars... unfortunately I don't really remember much of it, and am waiting for my new camera to arrive as my old one is broken, but heres a general idea of what happened:
Went to another bar, met up with two more friends, had a beer and a really really strong rum and coke
Went to another bar?
Went to another bar?
Went to another bar and somehow my friends thought I was going to the bathroom when I just got up and left and walked home blackout drunk ALONE BY MYSELF in a city that had seen a sharp increase in murders recently (great friends, yeah?).
Made it home unmolested and puke/passout/repeat for a few hours in the bathroom?
The next thing I'm sure about it that at 5 am I crawled into bed, then I woke up at 9 am still drunk, I stumbled into the bathroom and got some water and ibuprofen and went to bed until about 1.

So yeah, it was a pretty successful night.

Everyone has had a bad roommate at some point.  Some are dirty, some are messy, some are super religious, some are whores, but as annoying as all those things are, I feel the worst is the douchebag.

One of my actual, original roommates is studying abroad in England for a semester, so he found someone to sublet his room.  That someone was a freshman that had been kicked out of the dorms for violating the alcohol policy (means he was caught drinking in the dorms 4-5 times, warned he would be kicked out, then did it more).  That freshman... is a douchebag.

From frequently not doing his dishes, or inviting his underage friends over on thursday nights to get hammered and trashing our place without any prior notice, to getting one of our parties busted by inviting 90 other freshman to our not-so-large apartment, this pales in comparison to what is his ultimate act of douchebaggery.

Last Saturday he went to a frat party with his friends.  He wasn't on the list but he knew the doorman, so he got in.  Once inside, he paid his standard 5$ cup fee, then went to get beer.  The frat guys who lived there were manning the kegs, taking peoples cups and filling them up then passing them back.  He got one beer, but then it was so crowded he couldn't get another beer for, and I quote, "like an hour."  So what does he do, this roommate of mine, when he's at a party where he can't get beer fast enough?

He leaves the party, goes across the street, and calls the cops on the party.

*I'll pause while you re-read that*

Him, a lowly freshman, called the cops on a frat party.  And not only that, he watched it get busted, then bragged about all of this to the rest of us at home.  We were shocked.  I mean seriously, he deserves to get the shit kicked out of him.

All I can do is keep ignoring him until he leaves around May 15th.  And then maybe tell the frat who got their party busted.