I'm Speechless And Redundant (Cause I love you is not enough, I'm lost for words)

I've had Comedy Central on for the last few hours, just kind of playing in the background through my truckloads of homework and preparation for finals. They have this awesome habit of repeating the same 3 or 4-hour block of shows, same episodes and all. Granted, no one should be watching that much TV and it shouldn't really be a problem, but it's a little redundant the second time around.

So this episode of South Park is on for the second time, and it occurred to me that it's going by about 3 times faster than it did the first time. I know this is just a game being played in my mind, but it's still weird.

Which brings me to the actual point here: High school, or just school in general, seems to go by faster every year. We get up at unreasonably early hours, we go to school, we take our core classes with not a terrible amount of variation between years, and we go home. This is living the same life in 9-month increments on a yearly basis. This is watching the same plot unfold for a second or third time on a TV show. This is repetition.

It made me think about how I get so caught up in the moment during new experiences, but not so much after I've already "been there, done that." It reminded me about all of the facebook and myspace profiles that mention the desire to meet new people. Almost everything that makes for a truly exciting and involved experience are things that haven't been done before.

It's like our minds are begging to be refreshed. Our desires are dehydrated, and our routines are salt water. I think this is an indication to live a little when you can. It feels good. Don't deny it.

P.S.-I'll give a quarter to anyone who guesses that song in the title correctly. Except, probably not, because I'm broke.

Fourteen Awful Lines Of English Homework That Justify Why I Never Write Poetry. (but I still kind of liked the message.)

Reach out and touch the air
Feel his gentle breeze flirting with your hair
Let him rest his fingers on your face
Listen to him pass as he runs his race
And when you try and look in his eyes
He'll whisper he was never there

You know what you witnessed, you know it was real
So you write a description of all that you feel
You step outside of your cozy home
A little scared 'cause these feelings are so unknown
And when he carelessly whips it from your hands
Please, please don't be surprised

Your soul was so thirsty with no water in its grip
It wasn't asking for much, just some moisture on its lips
Don't cry, sweetheart, is what you'll be told
But it's hard when every gun goes off you were only supposed to hold
And when you're victim to his icy winter winds
Try to remember he's the last one to keep you warm

But the first to make you cold.
This I know.

What The Hell?

What is hell, exactly? Is it a place of postmortem torment? Is there fire, brimstone, or sheets of ice, perhaps? I can’t claim this untrue, but let’s put these two awful ideas together and say that there are titanic amounts of flame and ice in the same misanthropic room. It only takes one scientist to whip out the laws of thermodynamics before the massive transfers of heat energy melt the glaciers and extinguish the painful lighting. Fire and ice are boring on their own, but even two of the most miserable forces together can’t bond to create something workable and interesting. Does this mean I don’t know a bunch of jerks who deserve the worst of what they’ve done thrown back in their face tenfold? Of course not. This just means the old ideas of nature’s extremities being the epitome of torture are stale and unoriginal. This is pain and affliction, version two millennia.

If I had things my way, hell would be a new kind of storybook where [revenge is the fire.] Some may call me vindictive, but I see no harm in goodhearted retaliation. “But Sarah, what about being the better person?” Yeah? What about it? You get what you give, and fraudulence towards me has never suggested any desire for my kindness. Why suffer scars without a fair fight? I’ll take care of what I can, and when I run out of ideas and motivation, hell will take over. And it will be known: not all storybooks have happy endings.

In my hell, there would be no specifics. Nearly every single person on Earth would qualify for a spot in the [burning pits of revenge.] Even if I had enough ideas and planning to extract justified amounts of payback, I would never be able to find enough time to do so. Most people fall into this same predicament regarding everyone that has ever wronged them. Lies, false accusations, unjustified destruction of reputations, wrongful manipulation, selective forgetfulness, unnecessary rudeness, betrayal, and the breaking of trust just begin the list of admissions to hell.

To make this hell permanent would make no sense. The point of any suffering done within is to complete the idea of getting what you give. Earthly actions will all have been separate one-time occurrences, so making punishment eternal would be unfair, considering whoever was the recipient of the transgressor’s violation has his own list of imperfect moments. To not have paid for a wrongdoing is to not understand what it felt like on the receiving end. Once this knowledge is gained on a personal level, the finite nature of this intangible hell will cast out the rectified soul. Into what? Until there’s something testable, we’ll have to go with the law of Man: ignorance is bliss.

We The HCTN Loyalists

The abstract friend. The outside acquaintance. The person you always see, but you never talk to. This is who I am, who I've always been, and is the reason I can sit here today and give a kind of third-person analysis of something that has a lot of people down right now. I won't claim to be a part of “a group” or “the group” or whatever you want to call anything regarding anything, but I know you guys, and I know who I support, and why I support them. And so it commences.

Here Comes The Neighborhood: we love them. We support them. We obviously care about them. By “we,” I mean the kids that try and get out to most of their shows and know more about the band and its counterparts other than “Oh Dustin yor so foiiiiine” or “OMG Will I love yor hairs.” The people who can say “Hey Dustin, I still have to send you those Brand New tracks from that one EP” or “Hey Will, I want to see you play drums sometime.” In other words, the kids that are here to be more than just hopeful prospects for the members.

The show's over at the Matchbox. Hicktown and friends go to KenTaco Hut. American Legion Underground is so tiny, let's all go to White Castle and spend half our money on fake tattoos. Both of the vans broke down, but let's chill in Will's basement and walk to Turner Pond anyway. These are just a few memories the majority of us share. There isn't ever really anything epic going on here. We're usually just a bunch of hungry and/or bored people that are already hanging out with a bunch of other hungry and/or bored people that happen to be friends.

But we have good times. Really good times, sometimes.

And then one day, Dustin So Foiiiiine and Will Lovely Hairs resign from Town Council along with Joe Has A JewFro, Victor Appreciates Jesse Lacey, Mikey Wears DARE T-shirts, and Stephen Moonjumps Like A Goon. Our leadership is gone. Hicktown is no more, and its people don't know what to do.

Change: to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone. Regarding the lake that the FriendFans HCTN have been sailing on, the recent discussions and rough decisions have defied all science and created an iceberg somewhere in the middle of the water for this Here Comes The Titanic to crash into. In the movie, if it weren't for that stupid iceberg, people wouldn't have died. But plans change, and conditions aren't always favorable. You also gotta remember, in the movie, half the people were able to be saved. Sure, there's a little part in all of us that's gonna be dead. I'm gonna miss hearing Cowboys and Young Thugs live. But we gotta set sail on our little temporary lifeboats till we find and witness the potentially great new things that come out of this. Maybe we'll like the upcoming project just as much for what it is. Maybe we'll all still hangout at shows sometime soon enough. Maybe this isn't the end, guys.

Above all, I don't think the diffusion of the band is the real issue here. Yes, of course they have talent and it's sad to see some of those great songs be retired. I understand this, and I'm probably gonna get sentimental about it every time my iPod tells me I need to listen to HCTN on shuffle. But I really, truly, honestly believe this is about the people. The friends. Everyone who consistently gets together to chill with these people we seem to know so well. The fear of all of this being lost. The fear of the bond holding this together breaking. The fear of no one organizing any time together, of no one wanting to admit they want to hangout as a group again without some bigger reason to do so other than “I miss you guys.”

This could very well happen. At the same time, we only lose what we think we deserve to lose. We fight for what we think we deserve. If something falls apart that we all want, if we ever feel the need to blame Dustin So Foiiiiine, Will Lovely Hairs, Joe Has A JewFro, Victor Appreciates Jesse Lacey, Mikey Wears DARE T-shirts, and Stephen Moonjumps Like A Goon for anything that we've let ourselves lose on our own, then yes, there is probably something to be feared. That “something” is the realization that it was all an illusion, that there was never really any glue holding us together in the first place. That will only be as true as we let it be. It will be the fault of whoever lets it be their fault. After all, "Love is alive inside of us."

In conclusion: things will be okay if we want them to be okay. Also, change isn't always for the worse. Just stick it out. See what happens. Motion City Soundtrack says it well: “With all my dreams hooked to hospital machines, I think 'Let's try redefining beautiful...'”

Science of the Sexes

I absolutely believe science is at least partially to blame for how people act. The line of purity of science goes like this: (click the picture for the full version, making it smaller just made it unreadable)



Going by this, you can't blame everything that everyone does on naturally occurring scientific processes because we, unlike the separate building blocks of like that make us up, possess consciousness, which is something we can't truly explain yet with what knowledge we have. The chemicals in our bodies definitely have influence on how individuals are inclined to acting, but consciousness to our complicated extreme allows us to learn from our unattached surroundings, which helps us along the adaptation component of evolution.

As we've evolved chemically/physically, our consciousness has worked side-by-side with science to alter the locations, living conditions, and everyday needs that we've had to adapt to. This considered, we've shaped our own biology and psyche in ways. This also means we have free will, so I can't agree that science completely predetermines personality, but this is exactly where sociology comes in, and is exactly why we'll continue to keep evolving, socially, physically, scientifically and not.

To Make You Laugh Is All I Want

Sometimes I think, “Hey, leave the feelings to the artists. You've abandoned that part of you.” So then I'll listen to myself. I'll close my computer and stop writing, but only after erasing all of the effort I put forth just so I won't have to remind myself how miserable I was before I fell asleep.

This doesn't fix much, because when I wake up, I'll remember the two hours of college prep work I put off trying to define the mix-ups of my mind in eight lines and a chorus. I'll stare at the blank word document on my screen, trying to come to terms with the fact that I have nothing to show for giving myself a double work load for the day.

I'll press undo, thinking “Hey, maybe that song wasn't so bad after all.” I'll see the extra letter I pressed on accident the previous night pop back up. Undo will no longer be an option.

All I'm really trying to say, is don't burn your bridges. And also, I agree with you Ace, waking up can be so hard to do.

I know, that time goes faster when you're sleeping
And I know it's not too good for me because when I wake up, I'm all alone

It's just enough for me to fall in love with you
And I wake up, time and time again with nothing here for proof

If I have to wake up one more time without you and these ugly red eyes
I hate the bright blue sky to greet me in the morning rather then your arms.

I need you to be with me, dreams can only hold me for so long.
And I will wait my life, I promise to do it right,
For just one moment to be alone with you.

I see us standing there holding something in our hands
I see an open door, I see us walking in
We're walking up the stairs into our room
Waking up can be so hard to do

Just Enough//The Early November

I Wouldn't Be So Sure

Certainty stands on the mountaintop of indeterminacy. To bear the cold nights and the whipping wind, he puts on many layers of decisiveness. Deep under his shell of outer layers, he's warming up to the ideas of his best friends, Chaos and Confusion. Only those able to extract Certainty from his cozy hiding place will know he's a failed contender, scared and alone, just putting up a solid front. There is always too much turbulence in his line of vision, whether or not he lets on otherwise.

A lot of people have a heightened sense of naiveté when Certainty comes waltzing around. The second grader that is so sure one and one makes two gets confused when the quiet girl in the corner rejects his invitation to go get ice cream after school. The man that is so vehement on casting blame withdraws himself from the situation when evidence piles up against his train of thought. Certainty knows this and savors the sweet taste of victory. Little does he know the deliciousness is as fake as his front, the arguments as reliable as his penetrable layers of clothing.

It only takes one run-in with Certainty to figure out you should never go back. When you're stuck on Mount Everest with nothing warm to wear, he will come along, posing as your long lost hero with a winter jacket. He'll fail you for everything you're worth, and when your real friends bring you back to the cold, you'll remember you were better off thrown and obscure. You'll realize you should have listened to them from the start.

Don't trust Certainty. He can't even trust himself.

Also, I have figured out the answer to life, maybe.

Money is not the root of all evil. Love doesn't get in the way.

At the end of the day, it's hope that ruins everything.

So much can be categorized by this one terrible word.

It's hope that it actually happens, real hope in that it can become a reality, that makes people do the terrible things they have to do in order to get the money.

It's hope that, no matter what happens between oneself and another person, makes people still embrace the emotion of love. Love is just another chemical reaction in the brain, like happiness, anger, whatever. Hope is what makes people think it's worth fighting for.

Hope is kind of interchangeable with faith in this case.

(I blame this on my severe lack of sleep over a severe amount of consecutive nights.)

Wake Up, Wake Up, You Are Going To Die!

Life begins now.

There isn't a whole lot I believe in. Among the list of my disregards is the idea that life starts after college, or after your schooling and training.

No.

Sure, I'd love to burden myself with 8+ years of college to become a professional nerd with my telescope and bible of interstellar data to process. Sure, I would love to go to UIUC and room with a friend of four years. Sure, I'd love having other friends already there to hangout with. I would also love to take advantage of their shuttle bus program and come home at least once a month.

You know what else I love? Winter. You know what winter loves? Snow. You know what snow loves? Car accidents. Freak bus accidents. Ending the lives of college kids that, by the definition of some, never actually got to start their life in the first place.

So what is it exactly that people are so sad about when these pre-living students come to such an unfortunate end? You can't mourn things that were never there. You can't mourn a life that was never lived.

Unless it really was there, and it was just dormant because somewhere along the line, someone forgot about the endless possibilities of chance and circumstance. You'd think those living in the future would be the first to consider this.

Wake up. You are going to die. Live your life!

You're Shouting So Loud, You Barely Joyous, Broken Thing

What do you do when the only way you can stop someone from getting hurt is to risk hurting them yourself? Do you try and intervene? Do you just let the cookie crumble? Is there even a reasonable option in this situation?

If you're ever faced with this dilemma, I have one piece of advice: throw the fight before the fight throws you. You cannot win.

Nonetheless, if you want to know who your real friends are, fight the battle. Every mediocre friendship you've ever thought more of will reveal its true colors, and you will grow a new love for your four or five friends that stick by your side. These are the only people that will ever really know you. These are the only people who will understand why you do things, and you will never have to doubt that again.

If you want to know what it's like to trust someone, be the contender. Put your trust in people who want you to trust them. When everything goes to hell and everyone speaks out against you in order to cut their losses, you will understand. When they fail you for everything it's worth, you will understand.

If you want to know what it's like to be the victim of assumptions, wage war. If you're not collaborating with those four or five people who know you, you're feeding mouths that will bite. Everyone knows the real story, but the facts are never told under pressure. Things are left out. Details are altered. You are wrong, and there is nothing you can do about it.

You lose, no questions asked.

Typical, a little?

Dictionary.com has found 36 different ways to define "life."

Honestly, I don't know how. I see one definition that's universally fitting: "The condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally."

Because no one likes nerdy dialect, all this means is that there are certain things that separate the living world from the nonliving world, and these things are completely measurable and testable qualities.

Like I said in my previous blog, life elsewhere isn't impossible, but it is rare. It's so rare that we could have missed it, or we might miss it after we're gone, even though some form of us has been here for more than 2 billion years, and we probably won't be going anywhere anytime too soon.

So why is it that everyone takes life so seriously?

It's embedded in us from birth to consider the human species as the most important of all on Earth. I don't find it necessary to give a lengthy explanation of why this is, because everyone has experienced this feeling firsthand.

If I would have never been told I was important, maybe I wouldn't have cared so much about what others thought for so long. Maybe I wouldn't have been so terrified of interacting with people that I would have let go of my teacher's hand during pre-school recess. Maybe I would have climbed more jungle gyms and not worried about people thinking I looked scared or stupid. Maybe I wouldn't have abandoned everything in middle school that made me a smart kid, and maybe I wouldn't be so exhausted all the time trying to make up for all those years of studying I lost.

Then again, maybe I would be writing about how the human species is important, just because I'd been told otherwise all my life and felt the need to give a counterargument to the issue.

In the end, all I really wish is that people would stop taking things so seriously. I wish people would reach out to the people they hate and find an incredible connection, somewhere, deep down. I wish people would willingly give people second chances, because that grudge that's clung so tightly to will disappear with the rest of the solar system when the time comes. If the Big Bang Theory is right and the universe collapses in on itself just as it exploded, none of the remnants of our species, no floating satellites, no radio signals, nothing of the sorts will even exist after so long. So what is it that makes people so judgmental, so hostile, so closed-minded? Why can't people talk to other people that have a different sense of style from them? What makes a person more socially acceptable, and why is it even an issue? Doesn't that just inhibit our potential advancement?

On these issues, I usually make little sense, but I'm so tired of how people treat me, how people treat each other, and how people don't understand that they're like this.

Maybe this will always be just a wish.

So, I was thinking.

Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to Earth. (By closest, I mean 4.4 light-years away, and by system, I mean there are 3 stars, Proxima Centauri being a whopping 0.1 light-years closer to us than the other two.) If there was ever any life around these stars, shouldn't we have been shaking hands by now? I mean, come on. 4.4 years to get some FM waves up in diz atmosphere? What gives?

Sarah, you're white. Really, really white. Stop.

So at this point in time, it's probably safe to say that there's no intelligent life in any of the nearby star systems, right? We haven't picked up any true signals the entire time we've been searching, so that's grounds of a good decision, right?

No, not really. That's actually really wrong.

Do you remember the first satellites ever launched by man? Sputnik 1? Explorer 1? Despite their gargantuan carrier missiles, do you remember how small they were?

Things haven't really changed. We're still launching little tater tots into our orbit every year. Little pieces of the space station, little satellite devices for ultimate control of your little cellular devices in your pocket, they're all little breakfast crumbs sitting on our Solar system's dining room table, controlling your life and your mind.

What if we haven't been the only civilization to do this?

What if, just like our little trooper 'tot Voyager 2, some other form of "mankind" has ricocheted some sort of mini alien breakfast food past the outskirts of their star system?

What if for some weird reason, that little table scrap made it all the way to our Solar system? What about if for some even weirder reason, it flew by Earth? What if it got sucked into orbit around us?

The International Space Station had to be jetted back up into a higher orbit not too long ago because the lasso that Earth's gravity has on it got yanked one too many times. What happens when things get too low in orbit? Bacon and eggs in a sizzling pan, that's what happens. Whoops, grease fire.

So, about that little foreign nugget, say all of this "Hey, I'm gonna fly by Earth and get stuck in its orbit because I'm awesome" hoo-hah happened at the dawn of the homo sapiens species. This may have been the only evidence of other intelligent life we've ever received from this corner of the galaxy, and may be the last we'll get for another 1.8 billion years. Who and what was stopping it from circling our home long enough to get burnt up, to be cast out of existence without a trace? No one, because we didn't know any better. We were infants in the life of ourselves. There was nothing we could have done.

If no one's around when a tree falls in a forest, does it still make a sound? There's squirrels, birds, mosquitoes, and raccoons to hear it. It damn sure does.

British Lit Is Not Physics 101

One day, a random stranger may decide to reach out and touch my soul and tell me I can have anything in the world I want. I'll reach back and tell this unfamiliar friend that the only thing I would want in my hands by such an unbelievable gift might be something that's not in this world at all. I'll tell this new face that anything they can give me may only be as vast as the speck of dust suspended in an ordinary sunbeam that we happen to inhabit.

They'll tell me of all the emotions I'm disregarding, and how with that mindset, I can never experience the greatest Earthly feeling of all: love. I'll tell them that what I want, I only want because of love—love of existence, love of another's presence—the love of life itself.

They'll tell me of all the gold and shiny diamonds I'm passing up, and of all the wealth I'm not considering. I'll tell them that money only has value because we all agree that a chipped and shaped piece of Earth's property has a number latched onto it. I'll remind them of how any symbol on any mix of our planet's elements won't matter when there is no one left to apply the meanings.

They'll tell me I'm no fun because I want no backstage access at my favorite concert I can't afford to go to, or no encounters with any of my biggest heroes, be they Jesse Lacey, Carl Sagan, or the fictional characters from the books of Chuck Palahniuk. I'll tell them that fun is only a delusion measured within the mind; I'll tell them we can manipulate the idea of a good time to whatever we want it to be.

This conversation will go on for awhile before my revelation. We'll go back and forth, understanding the other's rationale no better, no matter how much humble reason flows from our human lips. Eventually, I'll tell them that all I want is knowledge.

The thing is, I don't want just any knowledge. I want to know one thing, and I want it to be negative or affirmative. I'll ask the stranger, “Are we alone?” When they don't understand, I'll ask, “Who else is out there?”

If more than six billion people and millions of species are truly solitary in the vastness of all the cosmos, the generous friend I've never known will let me down lightly. Since this magnificent being's power ends outside the Earth's exosphere, a blank answer will tell me more than I ever believed I could know in my lifetime. There is more. We are not the end.