What's Up?

How funny would life be if we translated everything we said literally? Every time someone asks "What's up" we reply with what we see when we look up. Never tell a Literal to "Break a leg" because they actually will do it and they could choose yours to break. You saw how viciously Amanda Bynes broke her friend's finger. Be afraid. Anyways, if you think about all the ridiculous sayings we have that would be completely off-the-wall when said to someone who takes everything literally, it would get pretty confusing. I don't have much to say about this, I just thought the clip was funny. And by the way, I'm hotter than Timmy Bishop: you don't have to feel me to know I'm hot. Sorry, I had to say that one. ;D

Turkey Day

To put it bluntly: I'm not a fan of Thanksgiving. To me it's essentially trying to force families to get together and eat a lot of food; something that should happen without having to make a holiday for it. Don't get me wrong, I love that we get days off of school, but the whole idea of Thanksgiving seems ridiculous. Wikipedia aka the most trustworthy source ever says that "Thanksgiving was a holiday to express thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation to God, family and friends for which all have been blessed of material possessions and relationships". Shouldn't we do this already? Do we really need a holiday for it? Is it just something businesses like to make into something it's not to get money? It's just like Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc where it seems like it should be something that's always celebrated; not to the extent of getting your mom/dad a present every day, but the same idea of appreciating them every day. Nothing is really special on the day itself that those holidays are on, but everyone makes a big deal about them.

And where did the idea of having a huge amount of food and having to eat leftovers for weeks afterwards come from? I think it's just businesses trying to exploit consumers: "celebrate stuff by buying a bunch of food from us". Plus the whole concept of forcing family together is just stupid. If families don't want to do stuff together any other time and only meet up for Thanksgiving then it doesn't seem genuine. On the other hand, if there was no Thanksgiving, a lot of families probably wouldn't organize anything and there would be less of a... family feeling. Putting an entire family together doesn't even seem like it's a good idea. There's always some sort of argument between at least two people in the family. And if it's bad enough there's the decision on who to invite and if you should take the chance in inviting both of them and hope they can hold off their fighting for just one day.

Also, according to the highly-accurate Answers.com, "Thanksgiving was established as a National Holiday by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. In the proclamation President Lincoln specified that the last Thursday of each November should be set aside as a day to give thanks for the founding of our nation". Why does Thanksgiving always have to be on a Thursday? I'm not so sure what's special about Thursday or November, but there’s no way of knowing (at least not now because my brain can’t handle any more research right now). When you word it like the way Answers.com does, it seems like Lincoln just used Thanksgiving as a way to increase nationality at the time of war, and since then it's been warped into celebrating family, not the nation.

So my idea of Thanksgiving: Be super nice to your family on every Thanksgiving and leave them with the impression that you’re awesome. And when you only see them on Thanksgiving every year, it’s just a one day façade you have to put up once a year. Try to forget for one day that most of them couldn't bother to even send a birthday card to you to let you know they still care and after that you can drop the act.

I'm getting worse and worse with these posts and trying to make them coherent.

Flawless

Y'know those times where you hate yourself? I have those a lot but I'm not exactly sure why. I know I can't be perfect nor do I want to be (because what's the fun in that), but I have this habit of pointing out my own flaws to myself. Probably too often. Then I recognize that one of my flaws is that I think about my flaws too much. Kinda ironic.

It started about two years ago. My best friend had left me for her boyfriend and I had one friend at school (don't get me wrong, she's a great friend), but anyways I was trying to methodologically find out why it seemed like nobody liked me. Naturally I focused on everything I thought was wrong with me. Pouring out all my emotions and frustration onto paper because I had nobody to talk to, I started to make a list of things popular people have in common. There was nothing to put on the list. There are no lists of qualities and requirements you have to have to be ‘popular’.

I realized that it's our flaws that make us who we are. An entire group of people can't be categorized into a specific list. Just like not every home in one community is the same: even if they have the same architecture, every single one has something personal to it. Everyone has something that makes them different from a group. People have different definitions of "perfect" and a lot of times these include those flaws that we think are bad but others may think are okay. I also know now that I don’t really want to be popular. It bothers me that I haven’t talked to half of the people in my grade and it makes me sad that not many people know who I am; but even so I enjoy having my close group of friends, it’s like we’re a family (a dysfunctional one but that’s why I love it). With too many friends to try and keep track of, it’s hard to get close to people. And here’s where I completely contradict myself. I’ve always wanted to be able to be close to people and have someone I can tell everything to, but at the same time I have these trust issues and don’t like to confide. I want to be able to be close to someone, but I also don’t want to get too close just to lose them. I tell my friends all the time I'm there for them to talk to if they ever need it because it's important to talk things out, and they tell me the same is true the other way around, but even when something is bothering me I have trouble talking about it.

I’ve lost too many (two is too many for me) “best friends forever” to even think that the whole concept is even possible anymore. (I'm not even really sure about what exactly a best friend is. Is it your confidante? Your partner in crime? I guess it's just whoever you feel closest to. Can you say "Oh such and such is my best friend" if they don't say the same about you? Does that even make it a whole best friend thing? Does the feeling have to be mutual? Is it awkward if someone says "You're my best friend" and they're not yours?) I know part of that is growing up and moving on, but at the same time it seems like I’m always the one that wants to keep up the friendship and the other person no longer cares. They’ve already moved on to being best friends with someone else. Even when I do occasionally talk to them, it seems like we have nothing to talk about and it just gets awkward. Things keep happening to make me think that the middle school experience I thought was fun and genuine at the time was not really that way. Experiences at the time were important to me, and I thought to my friends too, but maybe that was my own ignorance. Maybe I just didn't realize until now that my middle school experience (or what I remember of it) could have just been full of me lying to myself and not facing reality. It’s not right of me to make assumptions, but judging by the fact that I only was able to keep semi-contact with about two people from middle school, they don’t care anymore. Now when I look back at notes I have from then, I wonder if the words on the paper were even true or even if the words those people spoke to me were true. Could I have constructed my own idea of middle school? It's possible, but thinking about it won't solve anything, all I can do is move on and enjoy the company I'm with now; because if I regret the past too much, I won't see what I already have.

Choices

In an extremely boring article for history class I had to read recently, the author wrote that: "Every human being has a choice how to behave". This got me thinking: is this really true? Sure, we do have a choice in things, but our choices are greatly influenced by outside forces so does this even make the decision ours in the end?

In the case of the history reading, it was about Nazi Germany and the author is saying that everyone at the time had a choice of what to do and that people could have resisted the Third Reich because of their ability to make their own decisions. In that period of time, if your choice didn't reflect the commonly accepted views of society, you were persecuted. In a time where the government would and could easily take you away with nobody knowing where you went, it would be frightening to go against them. With the possible consequences in mind, people knew what they could and couldn't do. So if they made the choice to go along with the regime instead of speaking out against it, is it really in the end their decision with so many outside factors affecting the choice? Some people did make the choice to go against the Nazis, but those resistance leaders ended up dead; other people did not want to do what the others had already tried and therefore their decisions were affected.

In today's society this is also true, but not to the extremity as during the rule of the Nazis. When you stand out and make a choice that is uncommon, you are thought of to be brave, but can't this also be plain stupidity? When people know something is hopeless, they still try which is admirable but at the same time it's not smart. People that make choices against the government or any body of people that have some sort of power don't typically get away with it. Whenever we have to make hard choices what do we do? We find out the opinions of others and what they think you should do. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being your choice? The idea of kids not having to make their own choices until a certain age is somewhat good because decisions come from experience which you don't have much of as a child, but it can also be bad. By not letting people make the bad decisions earlier in life they can make them later on when the decision is more important.

We always have to take responsibility for the choices we make, because although people can plant ideas in your head as to what you should do, it's still your decision in the end. Nobody can completely force you to do something, unless you are put in a situation where there is no other option and even then can that be considered a choice? I definitely think it is important to get input from people that you trust would give you good advice, but that doesn't mean their opinion should be the decisive factor in a choice. Ultimately you will have to take responsibility, and you can't just say "my friend said I should choose that so I did" because you carried out the making of the decision itself.

“While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.”

Happystances

I wish life was simple enough that my goal could just be to make people laugh. I’d never make it as a comedian because that requires standing in front of people. Lots of people. Plus a lot of the jokes I make are about a previous joke with someone so the audience wouldn’t get it. I love making people laugh because when they laugh I get in a better mood too and laughter is the best medicine. There's hardly anything that laughter can't cure. Everyone has some sort of sense of humor and once you find it you can use it to make people happy. I've always had this desire that it was possible to bottle up laughs and store them away. I'd make a top-secret lair and collect the laughs of people around the world. It would have to be a pretty big top-secret lair so that "secret" part probably wouldn't work. Then, the lair could be made into a museum where people could just walk in and instantly feel better being surrounded by laughter. Laughter is contagious just like yawning and it spreads like a disease. But the good kind of disease. A lot of times I’m put in a better mood just by someone else laughing, even if I don’t really know them. The moments when you laugh until you cry and your ribs hurt from laughing so much are memorable ones; at least for me.

This is my biggest problem with internet communications: people can say “Haha I’m laughing” but I can’t see them so it’s not as satisfying. It may seem sort of self-centered but I want to make someone else laugh so that I feel better too. But that’s the Trufax (like Carfax but for truth instead of cars) about how I feel about that. Too often my mom can tell when I’m talking to people online because I smile when I am; talking to my friends makes me happy and I guess it’s a subconscious thing that I do. Even (heck especially) when I’m sad I still try to make other people laugh as much as I can because I feel like if I go one day without making at least one person laugh then the day was pretty much a waste. Plus laughing at someone laughing is pretty fun too. One thing I wish I could know how to do is keep a straight face. When someone says something really funny with a straight face it makes it even funnier because they look completely serious. My old soccer coach tried to teach me how to keep a straight face (we pretended it was some sort of class) and I failed miserably.

The greatest thing about laughing is that no matter how much you do it, it doesn’t get old; you can’t get bored of laughing unless your laughs are faked. Every time there’s the rush of happiness and laughing too often doesn’t diminish that feeling. It’s like a bar of chocolate that never runs out. You can never get tired of eating chocolate and even if you do get a little tired of it you can always give it to other people. I’m starting to realize a lot of my analogies are food-related. I feel like Liz Lemon. And I know my title is stupid as usual, I can never think of good ones. It's like the word "happenstance" but with "happy" instead of "happen"...

The "What If" Universe

The "What If" universe is one of the most explored universes and yet we still don't even remotely understand it or why it exists. When we settle in the “What If” world, pull out a foldy chair and take a sip of a piña colada, it doesn’t help the situation at all. It’s just like watching your life go by living in the what could have happeneds. A lot of times we think about how things should have gone or how they could have gone in afterthought of an event or series of events. The "What If" universe is really intriguing. Sometimes we use it to make ourselves feel better about a decision and sometimes we use it to make ourselves feel worse. It's a sort of subconscious universe that surfaces when we think about something. Especially when something bad happens, the "What If" universe comes out and you start pondering if you could have done something another way to avoid the outcome. It can lead to us blaming ourselves for what happened which isn’t something you would want to do, but it just happens. This also may show the innate desire of humans to be able to control every occurence when not everything can be controlled(at least I think this).

This is a good segway (I was gonna put a picture of a segway here but Blogger won't let me for some reason) into another discussion: why do we invite pain unto ourselves? Frequently, our mental pain is from something we construct and why would we create something that pains us? Too often I get paranoid about when people are vague about things they say to me because it makes me think that they're trying to hint that they're talking about me. Since these things are hardly ever about me, by over thinking everything I'm just hurting myself. It's not something I can control, it's just something I do and it causes me a lot of incessant worrying. When we think of these types of “What if”s, it could cause you to act differently towards people because by spending too much time in the foldy chair you haven’t realized the world moving on without you. Living in the “What If” universe is just like living in the past; you can’t change what has already happened, yet you spend your time wishing you could have changed something you did. By the time you’ve taken the last sip of the piña colada, you’ve constructed a whole other reality around these let’s call them “probabilities” (for lack of a better word).

While we can learn from our time spent in the “What If” universe it seems to usually end up hurting more than helping. Sure, we can learn what we should do if we ever face that situation again, but if you spend too much time thinking about a one-time situation, regret comes to the surface. Spending too much time in the “What If” universe is a lot like a NASCAR race: you just go in 8,000 circles (possible exaggeration here) trying to predict when you should go to the pit stop for a break while still wanting to win the race. When you keep thinking about what could have happened and go in circles back to points where you could have changed something you did, you go further to think about what the results of changing your actions could have been; which is a pointless thing to think about because you can never know the consequences of taking the other road (Frost reference; be proud, very proud). Yet when you tell yourself to make that pit stop and take a break from thinking about it, you don’t want to because you’re curious as to what you think the results may have been.

This quote doesn't make complete sense to the rest of the post but it's funny: "The future is like a Japanese game show: you never know what's going on"

Buffy Quotes~~

I like this quote from Buffy and wanted to share it:

"Humans have no purpose that unites them, so they just drift around, blundering through life until they die, which they know is coming, yet every single one of them is surprised when it happens to them. They're incapable of thinking about what they want beyond the moment. They kill each other, which is clearly insane... and yet here's the thing. When it's something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they're lame morons for fighting, but they do!"

This is spoken by Anya who is a former vengeance demon who would rip out men's hearts for doing something wrong to a woman. She doesn't really understand human feelings or humans in general, especially mortality because as a vengeance demon she was immortal. I like a lot of the lines she says and a few times in the series she says some really profound things like the quote above. Just about everything she says is very blunt and straightforward: "I don't talk to people much. I mean, I talk to them, but they don't talk to me. Except to say that "your questions are irksome," or "perhaps you should take your furs and your literal interpretations to the other side of the river." Anya is one of my favorite characters; she takes the literal interpretation of everything and just puts it out there like it's normal. In one episode, Anya is playing the game Life and the conversation is as follows:

Anya: Crap! Look at this. I'm burdened with a husband, and several tiny pink children, and more cash than I can reasonably manage…
Xander: That means you're winning.
Anya: Really?
Xander: Yes. Cash equals good.
Anya: Oh! I'm so pleased! Can I trade in the children for more cash?

As someone struggling to accept the concept of death and mortality, I find it interesting as to her views on it. And yes I do know that it's a TV show and it's not possible in real life to know about a previously immortal being's thoughts on mortality. After the death of Buffy's mom (Joyce), Anya says:

"I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."

There are just way too many good Anya quotes

Anya: I think we died in this car on the way to the airport, and now we're stuck in hell.
Xander: The radio said no traffic.
Anya: It's a hell radio, of course it said that

--
Anya: Thank you for making time in your busy life to come in here and get in the way of mine

--
Anya: I can just hear you in private. 'I dislike that Anya. She's newly human and strangely literal.'

Anya also has a weird obsession with money. Later on in Buffy, she gets to co-own a magic shop and she is always talking about her money. This is a pretty random post. But I like it. Because it's random.