Got to Escape

I'm suffocating here, I really am. Well, I am happy that I am taking Japanese class at Enloe, but other than that, it's one period, and if I wasn't taking that class, I don't know if I could get up at 5:30 every morning. My life here sucks. I want to train in martial arts, desperately. Right now, some might not believe what I am doing, some might say it is crazy, my parents say it's crazy, but I have some instructional DVD's for a particular style of martial arts. One is unarmed, one is sword, and another is modern self defense, like what you could encounter in modern day. Well, that and my own personal training is what I have been doing for the past... couple months I guess. Mom says that I need to join a real place, with real people, because the people are only seeing what is written on a piece of paper. What people, you ask? Colleges. Yeah, that's dictating my life as of now. What do I want to do? I would love to just go someplace that has a Dojo for the style I am training in. There are tons, several in North Carolina, but none in Raleigh. WHY IS RALEIGH SO SCREWED UP??? Even my relatives from Texas say, "this place is... interesting..." Yeah, I dunno. Mom has been saying, "we'll move this summer, we'll go find another job." then, she turns around five minutes and says, "this is where there is opporitunity, this is the only place!" Well, we haven't exactly been looking for jobs... partially due to the fact that my mom has been homeschooling my little brother and sister... I just have to get out of here!!!

Path to Spiritual Enlightenment

So I'm sitting here, Saturday night, with a giant headache... I mean, so huge that I can barely even think, probably due to lack of proper nutrition over the past couple of days. So what did I do? I went and had a couple tangerines, and now they smell like, well, tangerines. In any case, due to lack of anything better to do, I started thinking about random stuff again, and then I said, "well why don't you write down this stuff in the blog?"

What am I thinking about? Well for one thing my career, my future, stuff like that. I think that it would be neat to make a small business, and work my way up the levels and spread my control to various places, and get in some money... lots of money eventually. Sounds pretty good. Then I turn to sports. For some reason, I haven't really liked sports, I've never really liked teams. This may not always apply, but sometimes teams hold me back. Sometimes... in any case, there have been lots of people coming up to me and wanting me to get on the football team. Our football team sucks, and the JV (and probably V team) needs some bigger people. So some people on the JV team look at me, 6'2" wide shoulders, and think, "I bet we could knock down a lot of people with him..." Even my friends joke around about me plowing through masses of people in the hallway to get to class on a daily basis. But I've never really been a big sports fan, the least of which being football, as much as it might burn me later to say it. Well, I don't say it in public, I just shrug when people ask, "so you're gonna play football next year, right?" It's gonna be a long four years...

Then, I turn to something else. Martial arts. Now there are two ways I could go in this martial art: sports, and self betterment. Now I think often about the sports side... looking at most of the places around here, I see a lot of black belt kids and stuff walking around, I could probably get pretty far in some martial arts, it'd be good exercise, but it could get to where I started to really spar. Now my sparing could go competitive, I could get some trophies, nice big ones, then I could either become a badass action star, or just open my own little dojo, and stuff like that. Or I could go to self-betterment and real world applications. I think a lot about this. When I'm looking for martial arts, I don't think, "I want big trophies" I think "if somebody tried to hurt me, or somebody near me, I could stop them" I really do think about what would happen if say, I was on a date, and somebody tried to mug my girlfriend, and whether or not I'd be able to be like, "whatcha doin' fool?!" *asswhooptime* Okay, that may be exagerrating it a bit, but still, fun to think about. Anyway, I think I could go both ways, practicality, and then dojo.

Now, only one thing left: where do I find a dojo that teaches practical martial arts? heh, heh heh, ha, haha, hahahahaha, in this shithole where I live? No... so, what do I do? Well, I'm playing with the idea of doing some long distance learning thing, where you order DVD's, with instructions, then video tape yourself performing those lessons, they evaluate you, then promote you, whatever. But that would require a camera... and somebody to operate that camera... and somebody to throw the punch/kick/tackle/grab/whatever for me to procede to perform the technique. That... won't happen... soon... so what do I do? Wait... bide my time... until I can leave. Until then? General fitness... strength, endurance, flexiblity, and for fun, stealth. From gathering several books on the subject, I have learned that everywhere the ninjas went, they studied sound, where it came from, what you could do to prevent it. So that's what I've been doing... let's just say that I'm a lot quieter now...

Article in Fortune Magazine and the Human Existence

Well, it's kinda a long title... but oh well. I haven't posted in... oh god a long time. But I mean, what's there to say? I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, get to school, slog through the day and well... get out at 2:15. So anyway, I decided that since recently I've been having lots more opinions, that and the fact I go to a school with a couple thousand people, I should post more often. But bigger than that was I was sitting here at the computer, looking around, to see a Fortune magazine talking about blogs. And I went to this guy in Microsoft's blog, and so I thought that well, I could start posting... some stuff.

So, after that rather pointless paragraph of why I'm blogging, let's get to the actual post itself. The Human Existence, and the meaning of life (again, I know, but it's been a while.) This could take a while, so if you don't have the time... I dunno, I haven't written it as of ***now*** being the moment I am typing this. So if you don't have the time, please leave. Yeah, that means you in the back, yeah, the guys asleep.

Another pointless paragraph. So the human existence. First of all, I was thinking that timeless question one early moring on the bus (roughly 6:45 am), that question being, "what happens when we die?" Well, if I were a religious man of the faith the rest of my family is, I would say, "go to heaven or hell, duh". However some other religions have a bunch of other theories, like reincarnation and stuff, whatever you want to believe. And then the people I run into all the time, especially online, who say, "when you die, your brain stops sending signals, your heart stops beating, you just... stop working... you just... die". A rather grim fate we would share, no? Well that got me thinking a bunch of stuff, but mainly stuff about heaven. Your soul goes to heaven, do we have a soul? If we don't, then what's that feeling you get when you know you're doing something really bad, or just taking a cookie? Well, if I were a religious man, I would say that is my soul, and my inherent goodness trying to tell me, "no, don't take the cookie!" But, what if I'm not religious? Well I thought that, and I'm really just throwing this out here, what if it's just a complex series of learned behaviors?

For those who don't know, learned behaviors (the term described to the class in biology) is something that an animal well, learns to do. Usually, good behaviors are reinforced, bad ones are punished. So, let's imagine you're a kid, and you take your friend's toy. Your parents find out, you get grounded or whatever the punishment you receive, and of course, you give back the toy, after an apology, which you *should* feel bad for. Now, you know you don't want to go through that again, so you don't take a toy. Well let's say a couple years pass, and you see your friend left his Game Boy at your house, and you think you could just... keep it. But before making a decision, you suddenly remember the cookie a couple years back. You remember the punishment, and you sure don't want to go through that again, just with a Game Boy. Now you might not actually think this, for me and for some others, you might get a feeling in your "heart" that you know it isn't "right". That's what some people say. But what if it isn't that it's "wrong" to take your friend's Game Boy, maybe it's just instinctive. You don't to get hurt, so you don't take the Game Boy, the waking conscious can think what it likes, but the subconscious sees it as survival. That's basically it.

For those who liked that, read the next couple paragraphs, for those who thought it was kinda boring... please leave. Yeah, that means you guys in the front, I saw you doze off. Okay, so now onto human existence, or more specifically, the meaning of life.

Another timeless question, "why are we here?" also popped into my head about the same time as the first question, that day on the bus. Well, I can't answer that question, nobody can, I can only throw out something. Let's first start off with something we as humans create. We create toothbrushes to brush our teeth, tv's to watch stuff, communicate ideas, and phones/IM to communicate on a closer level. I could go on and on with stuff like pencils, desks, chairs, computers, books, everything that we created has a purpose of some sort, even if that purpose is no more than to help fulfill something else's purpose, like a battery. So, somehow we as humans were created, by god or by random chance, we were created. The point is something happened and we popped up here. Now, let's imagine now that we are that toothbrush, and whatever created us is now the human in the previous scenario. So if we are a toothbrush, we are to brush teeth, keep them clean, minty fresh breath, no plaque. So, let's go back to us as people. We were created, and must also serve some purpose. Even if we were created just so our creators can watch us struggle, that is our purpose.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there, something for you guys to think about.