This blog is closed until further notice. Decided to start a new one since this one ended up just being about my former darling with which the relationship seems now rather unreconcilable. Although he may have done something very horrible by now, I still very much adore him. Anyway, the privacy setting on those entries about him are now friends only.

If you're a good stalker, you will easily find my new blog.

I was so worried about what my results would be from taking the tests this year (LINK). Today I got back my results, and I am extremely happy. I got 5's on American history and English language and a 4 on Chemistry. Obviously I would've liked the Chemistry one to be a 5 also, but I cannot complain much because I did not pay much attention in class through I got A's all the time. Next year, I will have so many AP classes, and I think I will take the tests for most, if not all, of them. Bring on the stress. =)

I recently read a speech by Ayn Rand that discussed who needed philosophy. I personally have held great interest in this subject for quite a while, but I found her comments even more inspiring to closely study philosophy. According to her, the essential questions that we must answer are, "Where am I ?", "How do I know ?", and "What should I do ?". I don't have concrete answers for these questions yet, so obviously I still have a lot of studying ahead of me. The second thing that she advocated was studying philosophy overall. Not only to learn about what suits us best, but also what other arguments are so one can defend our views against them. Currently I am facing one such conflict in philosophy comprising of the ideas of Atlas Shrugged and Bhagavad-Gita, one preaching reason and the other, faith.

I read Bhagavad-Gita near the beginning of summer vacation, and I was unsure about what to take away from it (LINK). Sometimes I do contemplate the possibility of a higher power although most of the time I denounce any mention of God. Now after reading Atlas Shrugged, I feel more compelled towards the reason over faith matter. I certainly am not a great fan of Rand because she seems crazy sometimes, but her ideas merely correlate and bolster mine. It is true that throughout history, people have been greatly oppressed with religion as a powerful tool. I also do not understand why pleasure is always forbidden and dirty when it seems only natural that we should pursue and enjoy it. I see that the problem is not necessarily the actual act, for example, sex. Sex by itself hurts no one except for many unwitting parents, but there are plenty of ways out of it. It is merely all the excess things that we attach onto it that bring repercussions. Relationships with the wrong people will end badly and hurt you, only it is amplified through sex. While it is true that sex can be quite an addiction, abstaining from it does not make you crave it any less. Wouldn't life be better if we stopped being guilty about things that gave us pleasure ?

I am having problems swallowing the ideas from religion. For example, this is a key excerpt from the Mahabharata. It is a conversation between a prince, Yudhisthira, and Dharma, disguised as a crane.


"What is the road to heaven?" the crane asked.
"Truthfulness."
"How does a man find happiness?"
"Through right conduct."
"What must he subdue, in order to escape grief?"
"His mind."
"When is a man loved?"
"When he is without vanity."
"Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful?"
"That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die."
"How does one reach true religion?"
"Not by argument. Not by scriptures and doctrines; they cannot help. The path to religion is trodden by the saints."


So essentially religion is tell us to shut off our brains. There is a saying that ignorance is bliss, but if that is true, then why don't we all just go into a coma and await our natural death. If we shut off everything, how will we realize what is pleasure or pain ? I do not want to be numb to everything. How can people see that as the ideal ? Wouldn't that just be similar to being dead ? That's hardly a celebration of living.


I have found that Atlas Shrugged has applications to something remote like Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko. I think that there is some value in watching the movie, but people who get sucked into its propaganda are retards. America was founded that the idea that it should be every man for himself. How sorely we have betrayed that ideal with all this social crap. I have hated social security for a long time because of its illogical assumption that the population can keep exponentially increasing in order to have more young people putting into the system more than old people are taking out of it. There is a limit to what the Earth can provide even with the miracles of science. It is also ridiculous that people who never put any money into the system should receive money from it, so it isn't even the concept of getting out what you put in since they made mistakes in implementing the system in the beginning. It is reasonable that there should be some help for people who have lost their job and need some time before they can get back on their feet. In fact, my family has been on social security when we first came over here with nothing. For the record, we got along just fine with the amount of money we received from social security and my father working part time while studying at a community college to support a family of four. Those people who whine today about not getting enough money are just fat asses who refuse to stop gorging on food that other people had to pay for. I digress...

Obviously Moore is trying to promote the idea of universal health care to the American public who seems to be the only people in the Western world who doesn't have government funded health care. I agree that there have been problems with pharmaceuticals charging a lot of money for drugs and outrageous costs for health care, but universal health care isn't the solution. For one thing, we pay high costs for medicine because we can afford to, and any good business would gouge you for all you are worth. As shown in Sicko, drugs are very cheap in Cuba because those people are poor. Would you like to survive on a couple dollars a day so you can get medicine that costs a few cents ? How about in the other Western nations. I'm sure the government put some cap on the price of medicine, but the money has to come from somewhere. Whether you are paying for it directly or indirectly through taxes, that money has to appear somewhere. This is the point where Americans want to believe that money can magically appear. Sure, maybe universal health care would be nice in capping medical costs, but Americans are unrealistic. Taxes have to raise in order for that to happen, and we all know how much Americans hate it when their taxes go up. After all, we have been running up national debt for decades because people demand services that they aren't willing to pay for.

Universal health care won't work because the country and the government system has fundamental flaws that won't allow any good plan to work.

If you think about the flaws that are apparent in the American medical industry, you will see that government is at the heart of the problems. If we hadn't made campaigning for government positions more important and time consuming to politicians, perhaps they would not be so deeply influenced by the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. If you think that handing the government even more influence on your health is a good idea, you deserve to die. Do you really want someone like Bush in charge of your life even more so than he is now ? Many young people who are even vaguely aware of the national situation know that they should not expect any social security when they are older. If that system has failed them, what makes them think that they should expect the government to handle health care any better ? Since we are such a large nation, can you imagine how long queues will be for an operation ? If you notice, all the other countries that have universal health care are rather small or generally don't have great disparity between their people. For example, China is large, but most of their people are bum poor, and their government controls everything so there is nothing to worry about with the people messing with health care. Russia and Brazil are large, but their health care system doesn't seem to be looking so good. Then just think about all the problems that could arise if universal health care was implemented. People would start lawsuits about their medical "need" to get cosmetic surgery or something. Never forget that America is a country of lawsuits first, rationality later.

In regards to Atlas Shrugged, I was offended when I heard some people mention that their system is that people should pay into it according to their ability while getting out of it what they need. Screw that. Just like I don't like social security and people who just won't die, it is stupid for the government to pay you for living longer and taking up resources when most old people just sit around and do nothing. That's right, just make one good claim to improving society other than possibly correcting the little brats that people are raising these days (but that should be the parents' responsibility) and remembering old untrustworthy accounts of history. Aside from the obstruction of free industry that government controlled health care would bring, I think that it would be unfair that you are responsible for any idiot on the street. Should it be our problem if some idiot got addicted to cigarettes or alcohol ? What about eating unhealthy food ? I know just from writing this that I will probably someday come down with a horrible disease that I probably won't be able to pay medical care for, but I can accept that that is life. People who have all the time in the world do not realize how precious life is, and I rest assured that at least my problem isn't other people's problem as I wouldn't want my healthy life to be burdened by other people's problems.

By the way, people in other countries probably have a longer life span than Americans because they aren't fat bums who gorge on fast food all the time. If people stopped eating excessively and started exercising more, the problems with heart problems would practically disappear.

I absolutely hate love triangles in dramas. I know they are very useful in filling up the plot line, but frankly, they are annoying. At the moment, I am watching Goong and actually enjoying it a bit even though I usually have a disdain for Korean dramas. I started watching it because I was going to upload it for the drama site that elisa and I are 'someday' going to open, and I wanted to know what I was posting up.

Anyway, there was a whole lot more political crap and the male lead was more of a bastard, but essentially, it seemed like a dragged out version of Hana Yori Dango. There was an added bonus with Min Hyorin although that was just for a conflict point. It is easily summed up with a main couple who don't get along, and then there is another guy who jumps in to comfort the female lead when she is sad because he too has fallen for the female lead. It is absolutely disappointing to watch these dramas because the second guy is always so much more good looking, better disposition, and all around better boyfriend / husband material, but in the end, the girl never ends up with him. I am a fan of those Hanazawa Rui's and Yul Goon's out there ! Know that there is at least one girl who would take you in a snap---!

Well, school is now over for the summer. What on Earth to do ?! I hope this summer will be a productive one in some manner. I shall try not to expect too much so much as to jinx it. People envy the youth, but I'm not really doing much with mine and neither do most young people. I plan to read classic literature, listen to audio books, play piano, take walks, and chat with some good friends. Quite dull I suppose, but 'tis life. Cheers everyone !

Lately I've been trying to finish Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. After reading Breakfast of Champions, I was enamored by him, but it turns out that his other writings weren't as humorous. The book was marketed as one of the few books revealing the atrocity of the bombing of Dresden, Germany, but that was not the thing that really struck me. The discussion of time was extremely interesting. Every moment of time had already been laid out, and things would always be the same, like "bugs in amber." By itself, it may not be that significant, but I also started reading Bhagavad-Gita, a "gospel" of Hinduism. In an example, a warrior was told to not mourn for the men who would soon kill in the ensuing battle because the men were already slain since it was meant to be. We merely perceive that we are the doer of an action, but it is only a change in the perception of our senses. In the end, everything is all the same such as when one looks as a human, death is only a change of body like changing from infancy to childhood to adulthood. The matter of time is remarkable because it also talks about the permanency of a person. If we exist, we never cease to be, much like in Slaughterhouse where death is merely a bad moment for that person who is perfectly fine in other moments.

Well, with all this, it brings up the question of whether or not we have free will. Going by the Slaughterhouse idea, events already have occurred and are unchangeable. Can we choose to give up in order to change life's direction, or has it already been planned out that we will give up? From the Gita, it seems as if nothing you do really matters since the universe is essentially the same forever. It is also the "pitcher is broken when it is made" mentality. What does a human life really matter in the whole scheme of things? Human minds really are too small to fully grapple all this stuff.

I'm not entirely clear on the message in Bhagavad-Gita, but it is nice to contemplate it. I really appreciate for cutting a lot of the clutter in religion. I've been a staunch hater of Christianity and pretty much every other organized religion for quite a while because I hate their dogmas. However, the essential ideas presented in the book are more plausible. I have seen some flaws, but I will try to not pick at all of them. Of course, whenever I get into religion that preaches "the right way" to live, I always ask myself whether it is really worth it to try. After all, the "right" thing usually involves a life deprived of most of life's pleasures. I'm not sure how frequent sex or masturbation could coexist with a life dedicated to denying the senses, but from what I've noticed, sex drives may not dry up until far into the fifties or even more. Hmm... eternal salvation from suffering or a constant yo-yo between pleasure and pain? It may sound ridiculous, but it's really a dilemma!

Recently I've been hearing a lot of mentions about this book called The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. It isn't really a new title to me since I heard my geometry teacher lecturing my class last year about it, trying to get us motivated to do our work and such. I obviously didn't take it very seriously since I had some pretty bad, GPA damaging grades in there, but it was still okay (A to -A). I digress... I have recently been interested in actually finding out what the book discusses so I picked it up. It's a rather large volume, and frankly, I think it would be a waste of time to read it.

No one needs to read 550 or so pages of someone repeatedly stating that "the world was flat." But perhaps it would be more useful to other Americans, but to me, this has been a source of great frustration in my life. I would like to be getting a better education, but it just doesn't seem to be happening. School is still rather taxing, but I think that I could be better if there was more difficulty to inspire me to work harder. Today I commented that it seemed like a waste that we wrote ten essays over twelve week trimester in the fall for my English class, but now in the spring term, we have hardly had to do anything. Of course the people around me started erupting with calls telling me to shut up because they did not want any more work. I certainly don't want more work, but I am not vehemently opposed to it as they are. It seemed like a waste to me to slam incoming students with such a workload and then just ease up on them as the year progresses rather than building them up to be better. I think that it really does not make them better writers because they get more time to work rather than learning to work quickly and efficiently.

I find that this incident today is rather illustrative about the problems of American society. Children are not taught that they should work hard, and even I have to say that I feel a bit disappointed in myself because I am lazy despite the high value I have for work ethic. It is natural that humans take the path of least resistance; therefore, it is society's responsibility to always provide them with greater challenges and motivate people to work to accomplish them. A large portion of the book seems to focus on the reasons why Americans have lost their lead above other nations in terms of technological innovation. Friedman blames this on the lack of motivation to pursue training in math and science and cites the great enthusiasm found in recent immigrants who find that American schools are not challenging enough. I can say from personal experience that it is true because I am not doing my best although according to my GPA and all the other measurements in American public education, I'm scoring among the best. I always have had a disdain for American born Asians. It noticed many years ago that as more generations of an Asian family have lived in America, the stupider and lazier they are. My parents are extremely hard working, and although I only have a small fraction of their work ethic, I am considered very diligent by American standards. That is upsetting because it is not okay to celebrate mediocrity.

I am not saying that Asian standards are really great either. It saddens me that we must do the right thing regardless of how we feel about the matter. It was basically our, my brother and I, duty to our parents to be an engineer or a doctor, someone who would make a good living. It did not matter whether we wanted to or not although it was essentially ingrained into our minds that this was what we needed to do in order to be happy. There really are no outside pursuits for happiness in the work place. Not extremely nice, but nevertheless, it was to be our lives. I am glad that I am skilled at doing what is expected of me; not all Asians were born geniuses, but if they weren't, they have a difficult struggle ahead of them because standards do not change just because they had other skills that society did not really value. All these other Americans have such bizarre dreams of being basketball stars although they are not very good at basketball or becoming a writer as if that really earned much of a living. To me, I see no other future other than those few career options. Is that really pathetic? I am unsure, but I am sure that society likes people like me very much because they are nice people to exploit, much like encouraging people to raise families so the government has more boys to throw at our latest enemy. (Another point from class, people don't like hearing the truth if it isn't very nice. Is America really taking advantage of economic situations? Aren't developing countries just poor countries? I just I really do have to add cynical comments, but whatever does not eventually end sadly? I digress again...)

Do Americans honestly need a book in order to notice and understand that they are the source of their own miseries? It is no one's fault (except maybe their parents who cheated them out of a good education by demanding lower taxes and not pressuring them and teachers to get more out of education) that they are not skilled enough for the high paying jobs available now. I feel no sympathies, and in fact, it comes with a bit of relief that there are people who are not at my level so there is less competition. There are already enough people to worry about.

Oh god... they're over!!! Life has not been very friendly this past week since I've had three tests: chemistry, U.S. History, and English language & composition. I swear I have a big new layer of skin on my middle finger's callus from all the writing. The chemistry one was harsh... really discouraged after taking it especially since the practice test in class was much easier. I don't know what my friends were talking about when they said that the tests weren't as bad as they thought they'd be. Well I guess I can't really judge tests. I don't want to get too pompous and then discover that I failed it. To me, anything less than a five won't be something to really celebrate.

Stress levels through the roof at the moment because there is so much to do for school. Everyone's caught up with their own end of the year stuff so there really hasn't been anyone to vent to. Oh well, summer awaits...

Here's a list of the people I will probably mention in my entries with a little background information for reference.

Narrator:

Chisaki - A great confusing mixture of contradictions, so to sum it up: she's everything and nothing at the same time.


People Online:

elisa - One of the few friends I have who are younger than me. She is working with me on a drama site.

immo - I met her from working at Nakama, but now we are rather close buddies... We are both rather crazy for cute subby boys. <333

slave - My lover... I'm his Mistress.


People in the Outside World:

ET - No, not the freaky alien... My relationship with him is questionable: too familiar to be just acquaintances, too enjoyable to be enemies, but too irritating to be friendship.