An open and frank declaration
Depth
Conservative
0After watching a movie, I tried to discover where life can go wrong. In this movie, some people were so rich, they spent their whole life avoid violent criminals, slowly moving, conserving what they have. And some who were so poor, they literally would die by the end of each day unless they did enough work, or sold enough, or got loans, made do by any means necessary.
To one, life was safe, to the other, anything but. Who has the better life?
As was (poorly) portrayed in the movie, success was found by ones who were free from the burden of money, both the burden of too much money, and too little. They spent time in relationships, discovered joys to make life worth living.
I believe it is a common dream to make a safe comfortable walled garden around us for ourselves and those we love. But do the walls really make our life better? Investing in bigger, shinier, stronger walls of conservatism is a sure fire way of missing out.
If someone next to you needs help, or has something to give, you can’t appreciate the gift of taking or receiving if you are behind a wall. You also aren’t help them if you are harming them at the same time.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle
rewritten as:
All that is necessary for evil is for good men to do nothing.
Peace
0Walking home at midnight on a sunday night through downtown seattle, there was no danger or rush. People walk around, police sitting in his warm car, workers cleaning up their business. I saw people cross the street on a ‘dont walk’ and then a single car comes, stops at their green light, and waits for the people to go across. By the time it was clear, the light turned red, so this car hit the brakes again and waited. Peacefully.
What does it mean to live life like this? No big meeting to miss, no work to finish, nothing at midnight on a sunday.
Yes we need to go get rest for the hustle bustle to resume again, but in some precious moments, we dont need to do anything. Just breathe.
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Culture reboot
0With my new asian pop phase, I’ve also jumped on board asian television, specifically Korean “variety” shows and reality ones.
I feel I have learned a lot about a different culture and makes me mostly tired of this one. But Koreans definitely aren’t perfect either.
They take the ‘would you rather’ game to an extreme and compare people doing things all the time. Compete to make the stupidest face, compete for being a more ideal wife. I used to think it was light hearted and joking, but they make no apologies and laugh about it. Then it becomes news and turns into dating rumors. I suppose I had childhood times where we would compare girls and give them numbers, or pick A over B. But, somehow doing this to their face was horribly insulting. Not in Korea.
Shinyoung: Im so good at making steamed riced cakes
Sunny: Oh, that means you will have a beautiful daughter. (Korean saying: she who can make steamed rice cakes will raise a beautiful daughter)
Shinyoung: My mother was also good.
Shinyoung: It’s a lie.
Hara: What do you call someone who sells doors? (door = moon in korean)
Boss guy: moonfany? (fany = selling)
Shinyoung: Sailor Moon?
Hara: Yes! (Sailor sounds like seller… nobody laughs, hara still smiles)
Shinyoung: She’s not even phased!
“Write it as a failure but read it as an experience” – Korean saying
celebrity world news, reality show.
0If I could wave a wand and become massively powerful, this is one thing I’d do.
Instead of news being about reality, i’d have reality show about news. With ‘celebrity’ types, comedian style and supermodel style, because normal newsfolk are boring I imagine. They need to be similar age and would benefit with some playful flirting or games and pranks.
details… (more…)
sadbomb
011 months ago
by Sheridan
in Introspection
Why don’t I have something to write, well I do I just dont want to push publish.
(more…)
Twitterface
0Twitter.. “Random and incoherent as writing on a bathroom wall” – Mockumentary trailer about Twitter
I am not alone, but I think twitter is killing explored thought. You can express a small amount of information, or a slice of personality but it is so easy to sound generic, or to put on a front. I follow some random celebrities and the best ones are like Rainn Wilson known as Office’s Dwight. He presents criticisms of culture combined with his dry wit and a lot of images or articles to support his thought. He is up to 2 million followers and they all get to see this side of Rainn. I also follow the Prime Minister of Canada who tweets about govt policy, and humanitarian @billgates, tweets about saving the world
All of them show one identity; their twitterface.
The reason I think twitter is killing explored thought is that I can’t ever get a real sense of who Rainn is, or why is how he is, unless he goes on a crazy @kanyewest apology rant with 70 tweets in one night. This is absurd and not the point of twitter at all. The point is to be mindless and concise. Heartless even more than mindless. When you are communicating ‘fun’ thoughts to two million people, it is easier to not get your heart in the way. Without knowing your audience, the most surefire way to appeal to the most possible is to be highly generic. If you talk about something very specific with a long backstory, or what is sad, or happy, or issues in life, these two million followers may unfollow.
I think a major reason a lot of this happens is because people bear their own burdens and dont want to hear about others, or unload on to others either. As a populace we can be interdependent on a fun chit-chat level, but when it gets real, we become islands of isolation. There is some safety and predictability in this obvious human tendency to turtle up. You can’t really get additionally hurt if you dont let anyone in. Certainly the opposite is bad: being an emotional mess crying in front of everyone about getting dumped is heavily misguided and probably causes lost respect in general. I sometimes feel shameful in saying I have a blog since many of them are exactly this: Emo girl rants about boys, american idol, vampires and punk rock adds up to be excruciatingly painful to read.
So we need to put on a face that is appropriate for the relationship and communication medium. The most superficial and one-dimensional of them all is the twitterface. But there is also the workface, streetwalkingface, doctorface, and others. Sometimes a good workplace, or a good doctor will create an environment to allow more personality angles to shine through, but at the outset it is usually safest to be strictly professional, or strictly medicinal.
I feel uniquely comfortable with my blog because I feel able to present a lot more than I normally could in my day to day. I don’t have to worry about who can spend 5 minutes to read about my primitive thoughts on psychology or sociology because this is written to be written, not to be read. Twitter I think is more designed to be read. The workplace by definition revolves around getting work done. But a personal blog can be anything. Where else can one uninhibited to be who they want to be? Not twitter.
I am an appliance
0Written 09-July-2009, decided to post it today. It is meant to be understood in the last sentence, so read backwards if you so desire.
I am a kitchen appliance.
I can make toast. and I think that’s my most used function. I dont hate making toast. I make a lot of toast.
Some want to use me for mashing potatoes. That is certainly possible, but I don’t want to be a potato masher.
Some figure out other uses, reheating meals or chopping. Overall good use, but nothing another model can’t fill.
Others figure the odd attachments like a cork screw or nailfile that pops out and it fills them with such joy.
Only to be discarded for being the wrong color.
Maybe some want me to be that potato masher, and milkshake blender, and snap off those dumb ‘peripherals’ that get in the way.
And then there is the company who advertises for me and lists all the great features, some of which are understated, and some overstated. Maybe I can boil eggs, but I can also make a latte and filet a fish.
Being lauded by the advertisers doesn’t really count for that much anyway. Not that it is bad. but they have a biased perspective.
I just wish someone would use me properly, find things I didn’t know I could do, and never put me down. Like how my mom sees my dad.
Expression
0I believe expression is good and healthy. Especially for men, it is a challenge to find a method to express and still be strong, sane, and secure. However, without a method, I think people end up without resolution. There are few things I hate more than cyclical issues. A cyclical thought will drive me crazy until I can just break that cycle. On a larger scale, cyclical problems, or bad habits are something that I believe everyone deals with. Some excuse them as part of being their nature and work around it. To me this is a cop-out; while we still are breathing, can we not improve? Most certainly, some obstacles can never be overcome, but I would suggest they should not be in our path to begin with. The obstacles in our path, and self-created obstacles, are manageable by the simple fact that we have ownership over it.
So, with external obstacles, or self-inflicted ones, when we bump into them and it hurts, or surprises us, we might say “ouch” or “whoa”, “ah”. Some form of expression to acknowledge its existence. If you say “ouch”, and yet continue doing that activity, there may be two reasons for that. One may be a calculated plan for eventual good, or one may be stubborn idiocy. If you DONT say “ouch”, then perhaps it didn’t really hurt, or its not really a problem to resolve and it is “easier” to tolerate. You can choose to live in a house with broken glass on the floor, dead rats in the corner, and land-mines with warnings over them if you really want to play hopscotch in your own life. It isn’t fun to acknowledge problems, and it takes sometimes significant amount of work and courage to deal with them. Welcome to life on earth.
Start by saying “ouch”.
bleeding
0Imagine you are in a small time-warp western ranch town. In your travels, through whatever circumstance, you are on foot, wounded and bleeding.
The gas station is shut down. The sheriff is out chasing bad guys. The mayor is sleeping. The blacksmith is away at a smithing convention. The farmer is in a field with noisy machinery. The barber sees you, but for whatever reason, locks the door and flips his sign to closed. There is a drunkard on the street but he is not coherent to assist. A kid on a bicycle goes by, and offers to help, but his home is in the next town over, too far to walk. What are you to do?
Thankfully the doctor is in. And a doctor is exactly what you need. Thank God.
Now, how important was that farmer to you? If the barber was kind and generous, would it have made much difference? Can a blacksmith heal a bleeding man? No, not by trade. That is what the doctor is for. The best these others can do would be to give you directions but their usefulness drastically diminishes once the doctors office is found, with them, or without.
