Journal Entries

Thursday, July 24, 2008

  • What the Frak?

    This is an interesting article.  Just read it.

    I can't believe that anyone would want to humiliate their child by giving them a bizzare name.  I mean "Sex Fruit" and "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii?"  What kind of frakked off names are those?   I thought "Latrina" was pretty awful for as student to have or even "Lemonjello" and "Orangejello" were pretty insane.  

    I used to think that Samuel was a pretty damned horrible name, but I realized as time went on it was quite a good name.  An 18th century name, a name authors, statesmen, and beer. 

    But to make up some weirdo name out of ignorance and or puerile amusement is beyond comprehension.  Those people should have their heads guillotined off for tormenting their children this way.

  • What is your favorite summer activity on a low budget?

    My favorite low budget activity is going to the library (or even the Huntington although my membership pays for it)  with a favorite book or two, a notebook for writing, and soaking in the industrial air conditioning.  Cost: $0.

    Next would be going to a cafe with the same. Cost: $5 and being surrounded by noisy people.

    As for activities with friends anything goes, but it usually costs more than $20.

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    Currently Reading
    Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies
    By Alan G. Gross
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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

  • What can a person do to be more optimistic in life?

    Choose to be optimistic.  Choose to look and think about things differently.  Control the inner voice and tell it to say something different when it says something negative.  There's no other way.  One has to want to be optimistic.

    I have always hoped for the best, but experience has taught me to expect the worst from people and situations.  One of my favorite writers put it this way about people in general:  "they are ungrateful, fickle, dissembling, anxious to flee danger, and covetous of gain.  So long as you prolong their advantage they are all yours, as I said before, and will offer you their blood, their goods, their lives and their children when the need for these is remote.  When the need arises, however, they will turn against you."

    I found this to be true so I choose to think cautiously.  Still it's hard to force myself to think optimistcally when necessary, especially around friends and bretheren in Christ.  Sometimes it bothers me to think about how naive they are to the evil taint that lurks in most people's hearts. 

    Teaching of course only adds to the notion that most people are as my favorite author describes.  I find it amusing, at times, to observe some pompous, dimwitted, new teacher full of altruistic expectations to save the world be eaten alive by those half-feral creatures squashed into her classroom.  A pity really.  Most of those animals should be strapped  The Wheel of Pain rather than have to study (ironically to them a wheel of pain itself).  But I digress.

    Think positively.  Don't become a teacher unless you really want to.
       

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Monday, July 21, 2008

  • What is the one thing you would do if you had the day off today?

    I had a day off today.  I have many days off.  But off of what? Work? Well that's easy.  I'd hang out with a friend and have a nice three hour lunch and conversation. 

    As much as I detest the lazy French and southern European peoples  (prefering the more industrious British, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples) and their respective cultures and ex-colonies, they do get one thing straight: life is too short for a 30 minute meal or even a 60 minute one.  How can one digest properly or even build lasting relationships with a short pit-stop to snort a crumb of food (have you seen Japanese people eat in a train station?  I haven't, but I've heard stories of the snorting--isn't that right Nan&Will? )?  It's not about the food, it's about the people!

    I can say that most likely a good deal of all the broken relationships and loneliness in this world is because people don't take time to break bread and just share unguarded moments of good food and conversation.  You can't get that chatting on-line, I can tell you.  Real smiles, real food, real people.

    If I had time off from life--well that's another story, but I won't indulge you in my Twilight Zone fantasies of revenge and comeuppance.

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Saturday, July 19, 2008

  • How would you accept rejection from the person you love?

    How can I accept it?  It happens so often that I've just grown numb to it.  I was a romantic once and believed in true love and such nonsense, but I've found a solution, not that it's a good one.  Here are the seven steps to dealing with rejection:

    1. Don't care about anyone any more.
    2. Don't expect anyone to care.
    3. Expect only betrayal and rejection.
    4. Be numb to people's emotions.
    5. Be numb to your own emotions.
    6. Take advantage of people's ignorance or weaknesses.
    7. Build barriers to make you unaccessable.

    You may not have peace or joy, but at least you'll have satisfaction and revenge.  You won't be a 'good' person if there is such a thing, and you may not be able to live with yourself if you have a conscience, but you'll survive (and get rid of the conscience it only gets in the way of satisfaction).  You only live once right?

    OR
      
    Just deal with it, stop feeling sorry about yourself, and try to put it in the past.  Hang out with positive friends (not emo people--they can cut themselves to death for all I care--they like that feeling anyway) that won't sympathize (sympathy is of the devil; it only makes you feel worse), but will pull you out with their own positive outlook in life.  Same goes if it's a family member that rejects.  Life's too short to be hanging on to negative emotions and trying to figure them out.  They're there.  Move on.  Love & kindness always show up when you least expect it, it's better that way.

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

  • Poem

    The Barista (1st draft)

    Lithe she cleans with cloth in hand.
    Punctilious with
    Each cup, each bag, each display.
    Then customer at hand, she stops
    And glides--ponytail bobbing--
    To attend.  Fluttering, elf-like,
    She shifts away dexterously
    Completing the order.

    In that moment the sun hit her so
    That through my yet uncaffenated eyes
    She glowed:  Arwen at work.
    And I, a forlorn ranger,
    Scruffy and half conscious
    Looked sadly into her brown eyes.
    Then, as if to transfer her light,
    She beamed her smile into my soul.

    --In a blink it was gone:
    Of course her boss was right there
    Orienting the new hires on
    Which bean and machine,
    Holding filters to show.
    It was her best and, for a beat,
    I wished the magic lingered:
    But the day wore on.



    Well finally some time to write for myself and not for some blasted paper.  It took some time to flog my brain back into some form of creativity.  Dry analysis can be so--dry.  Anyway the day does wear on and I've got to meet with my thesis director--I fear that there's going to be another draft.  *sigh*

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Friday, July 11, 2008

  • What is your favorite comfort food?

    Fried Chicken.  It has to be fried chicken.  Juicy, crunchy, savory fried chicken.  I vowed not to have fried chicken until I finished my paper on Job & an "Essay on Man."  Yes.  I have stayed faithful to that vow.  It has been two years.  You don't know how hard it is to not just get a bucket of KFC and chow down.  How many times have I looked with longing, as a buddhist for nirvana, as my collegues and I drive past Churches to go to Hollywood Park?  Innumerable.  I plan to have a full meal at Roscoes onces this infernal paper is completed.

    Other comfort food for me that I have avoided, but not vowed to not eat are Niu Ro Mien, pot roast, prime rib, crab, lobster, and any delicious steak from Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.  Just look at the steak on their website.  It's carnevore porn.

    Of course BBQ corn with satay sauce is a given comfort food.  The only one that I will allow myself of having when I am exceptionally depressed--like today.  

    All I've done is write, write, write and what have I to show for it but 5 measly pages.  I've written more in my sleep!

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

  • Cell Phones

    Well, it's finally law in California (as of July 1, 2008) that using a mobile phone (except texting for adults--that's bizarre) while driving is an infraction.  And that minors cannot use mobile phones at all.   Now I'm all for the minors part, in fact I think that minors in general shouldn't drive at all--the way they disregard pedestrians, speed bumps, and traffic laws--teens especially.    Especially girls who try to look sexy making sure they take a powder ever three minutes and boys who have to look macho by blasting their stereos and bobbing their heads like some attention starved Romanian orphan--apes!  And we find it funny how Spider Monkeys behave on the Discovery channel.

    But that's beside the point.  Mobile phones.  Is it me or is it particularly disturbing when people use the cell phone while they're on the toilet?  It's bad enough that people talk really loudly on the phone in places like the library, restaurant, or stores.  Not to mention on public transportation.  But in the john? 

    What's up with that?  I know that certain people can have conversations in the restroom and that that's been common since Roman times, but phone calls?  It's one thing when you're there with the other person and I can even barely understand if it is a quick receiving call, but to place an outbound call once you've settled yourself?  Take this conversation I had the *pleasure* of overhearing at my uncle's wedding reception recently:

    Toilet boy [dials his phone on speaker--either that or it's really loud]
    Other end: Hey.
    TB: Hey.
    OE: Where you at?
    TB: I'm at the Sam Woo [New Capital now] in San Gabriel.  I'm taking a dump.
    OE: No, fuck.  So did they make you eat sea cucumber?
    TB: Yeah, I tried to avoid it.  [farts] There's all sorts of other shit they tried to make me eat.
    OE: That's what you get for dating a Chinese girl.  How are her parents like?
    TB: They're cool, they keep on trying to make me try every dish.  I had a little chicken's feet. [farts loudly followed by the splashing sound of feces hitting water].
    OE: That's fucking wrong.
    TB [philosophically groaning]: That's the price I have to pay to get a hot Asian girl.

    Yes.  Inane wasn't it?  Disgusting wasn't it?  Why does this happen?  Do you know how hard it is to relieve oneself having to listen to such brainless conversation?  To have to listen to conversation at all?  In that most intimate of moments when one is supposed to be communing with Mother Nature herself. 

    Tiles make things echo.  Things like splashes and farts--so why call?  Why invade other people's privacy with a phone call to some friend, or relative, or loved one?  Don't rollover minutes roll over anyway?  Must one be so desperate for conversation, at all times, including pee-pee-poo-poo time?  Is anyone so busy that the only time to keep in touch is when your booty is touching the sanitary wafer on the toilet seat?  Or is it some perverted desire to perform a feat of multitasking to a captive audience?

    I don't know or presume the reason's why.  I can only find the result disturbing and ill-mannered to the point of barbarism.  I mean I don't want to ever have to hear (most likely will) again:

    OE: And?
    TB: I wanted to fuck her in the ass.
    OE: Why didn't you?
    TB: Didn't want to get shit on my dick.

    Yes.  Only slightly less annoying than people who always have to wear their Blue Tooth headset at all times--as if they were so important that God would be calling at anytime to tell them they've won the lottery.
    Currently Listening
    Roast Beef of Old England (Traditional Sailor Songs)
    By Jerry Bryant, Starboard Mess
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Thursday, July 03, 2008

Palamides

  • Visit Palamides's Xanga Site
    • Name: Samuel
    • Country: United States
    • State: California
    • Metro: Los Angeles
    • Birthday: 9/9/1975
    • Gender: Male
    • Member Since: 7/15/2003
    • Lifetime

About Me

  • I'm sharing my thoughts as honestly as I can and sometimes, maybe, a few poems, rhetorical arguments (mostly satire), opinion-editorial articles, and literary insights. Be warned: I'm a hopeless romantic dipped in bitter cynicism. I love satire. Juvenalian satire.

Pulse