Me in a nutshell
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There was one time I was talking with my mother and she was listing off which girls of certain races (in some instances, religions) she would love if I went out with (because this is the type of stuff she does). Either myself or my brother asked about if I went out with Muslim girl. My mother's response was, "No, never. Those people are crazy."

My brother and I are confused.

Actually, to this day, I'm still confused. Now, I know my mother is racist. On multiple accounts, actually. However, while she will wax eloquently often enough on certain fortunate enough souls, usually follows of Islam (or, in her vast understanding, the entirety of the Middle East) are not targets.

Also, I know my mother is capable of decent rational thought. She can exercise that, I swear. Which is why my brain is literally unable to compute this situation. I mean - it just does not logically make sense. As a rational and thinking animal...how do you possibly come up with this? Surely you can't possibly think that a few extremists constitutes a full people, right?? And, further, if I were dating a Muslim, they'd probably be raised in America, right (if you can't get over the concept of the entire Middle East does not equal people of insanity)??

And, yes, I understand that some people don't actually constantly apply reason and logic to their daily actions and thinking and their actions cannot be expected to make sense - but, but - I do. And I cannot understand how you can honestly believe that they're "crazy" without your brain imploding. Yes, illogical thought does that!
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     "You stopped me because you were so empty, like a cavern impeding in upon itself, and you were so stark a testament of the depth that life was willing to go."
     She looked up at me, then quickly back at her right hand, using the left to push her glasses back up her nose.
     "But shouldn't I be happy?"
     I laughed. "Yes. The greatest part is healing. I just want to be there, though - from the beginning. I want to see you at your most breathtaking and awing."
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We, as a society, attach such significance to doing what's right and being an upstanding person. Which, to an extent, I find kinda funny. Because we only do it because so many people just never bother.

Despite all the temptation, humans remain flexible and completely controllable creatures. The most fascinating thing about being human is that once you gain awareness of yourself, you can do just about anything with yourself.

Doing what's right doesn't take much. It might take practice (many years of perfecting), but doing the right thing just once takes no effort but deciding to do it.

The change starts with you, and only you can do it.
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Got back from the Translating Identities Conference 2 days ago, a conference specifically for Trans issues. It was rather amazing, though I'm drained.

And, in a bit of a related fashion, a girl in a formal suit is to die for.
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The crazed pacing
With the racing placement
Of a pulsing amazement
That this time may hold attainment
Is a rare occasion
When you've forsaken placin'
Yourself in the line of venture
Yet the stubs are entered
You deftly laugh despite the uncertain pressure
Yet know indefinitely that any quip she mentions
Will attain such frank attention
Your wish for a current pension
Is suspended - ended?
Well, at least for this present session
Pretention suspended
Too nervous anyway for the mask to question
Every aspect of this willed convention
Still concerned that initial intentions
Will change in less time than the last impression
The seats filled empty 'cept the last couple to enter
Your eyes are forward, but your mind is centered
The entire flick upon whether
You should take her hand or wait your measure
You leave the way you entered
Hold the door for her, yet in the car still feel the stressors
Now your hands are shaking
Your mind is racing
To say some bit of conversation
Now her house you're facing
Walk the walkway, bracing
In the end - you're wondering what's been through her mind already

I thought I understood rhyme; Rakim laughs at me.
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I can understand if you dislike school, but if you're still asking what's the point by around my age, I'm going to start worrying about you (in a non-loving manner). I can understand if you might question people's assumptions on its necessity for you to do well in life, I can understand if you question how they teach it or the system or what they focus too much on and not enough on, etc. but if you honestly don't think there isn't a merit to much of what they teach you...? History is important - if I need to invoke the cliché old saying or have to actually explain why this is so to you, I've lost all respect for you (it's harsh and I'm almost always never firm one way or the other - that should tell you something).
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I think that wanting - no, needing - to create art and being unable to do so in at least an adequate fashion is more cruel a suffering than 19 (going on 20) years of depression.
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     Jonathan looked out the window of the moving bus, avoiding focusing on the kids in his background. He'd let Kaz handle that.
     It seemed that's what Kaz had always been better that. Not that he'd stoop to their level, consider himself an equal amongst those dwarf demons. Jonathan wouldn't have been able to tolerate him otherwise. Rather, Kaz knew how to deal with it all, the crushing weight of the raining children this world seemed intent on pouring out. He might be a fan of contraception just for this reason, but his liberal ideals kept him from supporting this possible cure.
     No matter what, Jonathan would probably always respect Kaz for that.
     He watched the local elementary school rise over the hill they were driving up. Jonathan stumbled (while standing in place), completely shocked.
     "Kaz! What are you doing?" he shouted, turning towards his partner. "We stole this bus from that school! We're gonna get caught!"
     Kaz didn't look in his direction for a moment, his eyes intently upon the road. "Relax," he told Jonathan, his voice fixed and transposed.
     Despite this, Jonathan looked like he was about to tear out his hair (his lifelong commitment to growing his beard, however, may have caused him to only rip the hair from the scalp).
     His eyes still fixed on the road, Kaz sighed at his partner's rigid frame. "I checked Mapquest before I stole this. We ought to go back this way to get there. We'll be fine. We're in a bus. No one can stop us now."
     Jonathan's arms slumped. He went to the front seat that didn't have a cretin sitting in it and leaned his head against the window. Someone had stuck their gum into a wedge in the window, another had drawn with a permanent marker on the metal below the window frame. Jonathan shook his head, bitter at the waste of opportunity they were given.
     He breathed heavily, fogging up the window. Kaz was right (as he always was). He took comfort in the murky white he had made the window, a heterogenous mix.

     The precise cleanliness of it was what made it off putting. They said it was so that you wouldn't get sick. The instruments. They'd clean the instruments. Syringes, the trays. He wouldn't be surprised to learn they wiped the pills clean with a cloth, each one individually.
     It's irritating. Dear God - it...is...irritating. That damn squeaking. He'd ask them to stop and they just keep doing it. Oh, it's not that bad - like Hell if you know if it's that bad! It's 'cause they polish those damn floors all the time, always mopping, always waxing. The drone of monotonous squeaking, all day - by the nurses and the doctors. And, if you spend enough time in the place, they convince the patients they should wear their damn rubber shoes as well; and then they squeak.
     The glass was shiny, consistently clear and without smudge. They held that needle over him just to make him squirm, he was sure. "It's for your health." Yeah right.
     He'd sit there at night, unceasingly searching the ceiling for dirt, a cobweb maybe - anything. He had found some, once. In a corner, somewhere.
     It was supposed to kill germs. It was mandatory. "I don't want it!" They tied him down. There wasn't going to be a choice.
     Ohh, God, did it feel so good. He had rubbed it all over him. In a corner, tucked away. Jimmy had asked what he had, had asked, had asked. Full moon, he remembered. Shining so bright. By the pale moonlight he took it out from under the pillow where had hidden it. So refreshing, so nice. Mold, beautiful mold, all over.
     The door had busted open so loud. But he didn't notice. No, not until they grabbed him, forced him down. He tried to eat it, embody it. He'd be different than all of them; he'd have mold in his belly.
     He winced as the needle broke the skin. Bye-bye germs.

What is it with outwardly confident and domineering girls being interested in me? I'm overly passive, you probably won't agree with more than half of what I believe, I hate being told and pressured into things more than once, I'm the farthest thing from impulsive and I'm slow as fuck, and I very much value my eccentricities. The more you get to know me, the more you will not like me; I can assure you of this.

I think I need an update on my consistant-huge-entry-that-compiles-all-of-which-defines-me. Right now, however, I need to finish homework and then actually hit bed. Maybe tomorrow I can actually do an entry that says something about what I've actually done during my day. You know, like a normal journal.

Until then, from the first of August from this year:

I've been trying since yesterday to think of something to say, but I don't know what I want to or even, say, "need" to.

I'm just at a point where I want someone here with me and our dual presense can be the answer to every question that may, will, or is plaguing me (most of those falling in the "I have no clue what they are" category).

Maybe the "answer" is temporary, or isn't really the answer at all. But it's nice and what I want for a while.

Thanks Escapist.

This one reminded me of you, Erin:

Thoreau would've been proud:

And yet it's so difficult to properly articulate you in any reasonable way. You're amazing like that.

Well, I had meant to work out different visual techniques in photoshop and, in pure Jon fashion, I waited until the day before and then stayed up all night working on it. The birds do sound very beautiful this morning, however. In any case, what I had wanted to accomplish this time around was creating something visually pleasing to the eyes along the lines of what you might find in pictures online that's different from the "realistic" alterations I usually do in photoshop. The hope was to practice and extend my own graffic design senses (if I have any to begin with) and to simply do something outside of my comfort zone.

The final product is strikingly reminiscent of the pieces I was looking at - however, most pictures with these aspects tend to have an appalling commonality. As usual, I was nitpicky about nearly every aspect (I have to wonder if I do just about anything with utter certainty and no doubt). Still not sure if there's anything I'm missing. But might just be me being overly analytical. Anyway, you guys can always tell me. Enough of me talking, here's the picture (click for the original size):

One month already (heh, for the third time now for us).

I finally decided to check out Jay-Z's performance at Glastonbury yesterday. It's pretty good. A few pop singles in there, but a good deal of them were rather good. He had some live instrumentation and when Public Service Announcement came on, you knew hip hop was there (that song is just great).

As I was reading through the comments, one person commented that (given the concert is held in England) it was just more "Americana", the same old sound over and over again. Which made me laugh like no other. Jay has one of the most distinctive sounds and flows in the entire game. Same old? If it weren't for Jay and a slew of other "Americana" rappers, rap wouldn't have the styles and techniques open to it today that it does. I mean, there's just certain things which you have to know if you even want to talk about rap. Biggie demonstrated how far flow could really go, Eminem and Big Pun essencially broke the rhyme scheme limit a thousand times over, and a good deal of rappers showed the literary capabilities of the genre. I mean, without American 90s rap, you don't have the progress in skills that have been demonstrated for others anymore. Not to say it's refined to that era or that there aren't talented artist showing capability in other countries. But, honestly, show some respect. You look ignorant when you're unaware of your past.

Well, seems my hope to see you soon Lizzie is going a little contrary to plan. Miss you though.

The issue with my life is that I can never rightly define it. I'm glorious when I think things will go well and, as a result, in love with every aspect of the world (I was having emotional explosions today with the fantastic weather). But when things don't look like they will turn out alright, my entire world sours. I would imagine that's how I am a majority of the time. Which, of course, leads to my usual debate over just hype or the concrete. It's the journey that's important, not the destination - so they say. But doesn't that imply we enjoy the allusion of the destination (the journey is just our anxiousness for the ending, no? It's just anticipation, hope, etc.) more so than the concrete thing itself (the actual destination). We like the dreams, the hope - all that precedes and promises - so that we don't enjoy the actual stuff (forgive my general wordings). Therefore, why bother striving for anything - it won't mean anything. We enjoy the thoughts of it - not it itself.

I think my biggest fear, out of anything, is just not knowing. I'm rational. I think in logic and reason - this is nothing new. But those tools, while infallible, only work so long as all information of a situation is bared. This is why I work better in retrospect. I cannot function moving forward for I don't know what's ahead.

Well, I've dived back into xkcd comics. Never heard of them (xkcd.com)?

I must thank Katie Holbrook sometime entirely for showing me this splendid internet strip.

I remember reading an article about Bill Waters (author of Calvin and Hobbs) and they had noted how some critics picked up on the fact that Waters can actually draw. Technically, so can this guy, but you have to admire his unneed to.

The catch phrase of the website is A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language. This is so true. One thing I really like about the site is that it totally plays to intellectuals and geeks.

A lot.

I, personally, am in total love with that last one. The comic also tends to focus on some stuff which, I think, our generation relates to far more.

I have to say, I do love the artistic variation on a familiar theme in the above one. But one of the best things about this comic is that it can go from an odd hybrid of intellectual and inane humor (that only it could pull off),

to a seriousness that seems almost out of place. As the catch phrase says, romance is in the equation. And plenty of it. All too often, the drawer offers (in a idealistic, hopeful fashion) love as the only solutions to our problems sometimes. In one comic, as two men start to ponder questions and their speech spills out, filling the page, the strip collapses upon itself, all sense of boxes and coherance lost in a mess of words and lines. Then, out of it emerges half-boxes with two people in them. They hold hands and walk off, amid the reckage on the page. At times the strip does nothing more than point out subtle IFs and MAYBEs and, in an almost surreal way, demonstrates itself as incredibly poignant.


The caption on the site was, "This one makes me wince everytime I think about it." Other times, it infuses its humor with the notes on romance.

Some happen to be straight serious.

It's odd because the picture shows nothing we haven't been told before. The artwork is drawn in stick figures. Yet I find the faceless characters to stand for something and the scene no less gripping than it needs to be. I dunno, it strikes home for me.

Otherwise, though, xkcd is just plain fun:

So many awesome references for an Epic Win.

That one will be my favorite forever.

Anyway, that was incredibly long and large, but I felt it needed to be said. If you read all of the strips, congrats. I think it's a good comic with a lot of subtle art.

On a completely unrelated note, check this out: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.matthewgood.org%2F2009%2F04%2Fand-then-beauty-showed-up%2F&h=b8c38379fb5dcf691c924d5637043670. Kaz showed it to me. It speaks for itself. Watch the vid in the link!

I have to wonder how many of my posts actually correlate to things I thought of that day or ideas that had been brewing in my head for a while. In any case.

The part, I think, I hate most about being single is you simply don't have anyone to hold onto anymore. Not that it ever promises anything, but you don't have a person you can hug or be close to. I've always been, probably, too physical a person than for my own good (no sexual joke intended (heh, for once...)). But it's always unwise to simply jump for the next opportunity (as the past would remind me). Maybe I just miss the simple prospect of being with someone (though history would yet again remind me the unlikelihood of that).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V32g3CwDHzg&feature=related

I was going to say before I really need to start dating again, but an ex of mine convinced me dealing with other people again may just wind up in disappointment (no, don't freak out, it's neither of you two...).