reading books, watching movies, and absorbing stories of all sorts really messes me up, which is why im pretty damn sure most professional actors and actresses are effed up the wazoo. in every story we hear things being stated as facts, and for the most part unless the statement is outrageous we passively absorb all this without consciously accepting or rejecting it. so all these things are in our mind, oftentimes in conflict with one another, not that that makes us think twice about these things because we dont think about them either way; theyr just kinda there. and then when the time comes for us to define ourselves (nowish) we, or i, have absofuckinglutely no idea whats going on. someone could say 'love is stronger than hate', and id be like hrmm yes that sounds good, but i also heard somewhere that hate is stronger than love, which makes sense i guess with the addition of another source which claims that hate born from love is the strongest emotion of all. but then again this one time when i was watching superfriends somebody said that hate cannot be bred from true love, though so many people particularly in this time and age are telling me that true love doesnt exist because we are no more than biological organisms seeking to fulfill our carnal desires, which could very much be true, but then again god could exist, and even if god doesnt exist maybe love could, though i dont know, but it sure does sound nice.

but one thing i do believe, though it's a conditional belief: if god exists and scriptures of the three main monotheistic religions are true, then god is an asshole. A: god exists beyond time and is aware of everything that has, is, and will occur. B: god created everything, including us, the heavens and hell, time, and everything else untangible. C: fate and free choice can co-exist so long as an individual does not know what his/her fate is, which is information only god can be aware of. Thus, god created us humans, and he, being an infinite being beyond time, saw out futures. no, not only did he see our futures, but he created it, because god created everything. then god created the tree of life, tree of knowledge, eden, adam and eve, etc, cept all this is pretty much metaphorical, and then banished adam and eve from eden because they took the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. that bastard. though humans were given the Choice to pick a course of action, god knew the course of action before adam and eve came into being; they had free will, but they fulfilled their fate set by god when he created their bodies and their lives. THUS, the majority of mankind is now banished to hell because they fulfilled a fate god created for them in the first place. i believe we call that 'being mean'.

so yeah i guess it's understandable that people have become their own gods, which makes perfect sense. what sucks though is when people who are their own gods are pessimistic. pessimism is defined as having an 'external locus of control', aka feeling helpless in all situations and blaming/shifting responsibility away from yourself, while optimism, according to psych ap, is feeling like you have control of your life. of course you cant Actually control everything in your life, because even if you are your own god youre not anybody elses, unless they yield to you, in which case you should milk that for all its worth, our power is the power to attach significance or insignificance to whatever does happen to us. say your ass sets on fire. you could either cry about it and blame the fates for hating you, and consequently have a very horrible day, or you could smile and put the flames out. either way congratulations, youre a fucking god. as shown in my masterful example, we have the ability to in a sense warp our realities within our own minds. now comes the issue of whether or not we should do this all the time. if we can emotionally detach ourselves from depressing things and make them trivial to ourselves while embracing everything that makes us happy and successful, then thatd ppprobably feel good. on the other hand, that might not be morally 'right'. flowers for algernon, the guy charlie or whatever doesnt want to go back to being happy and ignorant, even though hes having a shit time as a genius. thatd be a case where somebody chooses to be miserable in order to remain aware of a 'truth', though he later dumbed down again, which is why the book is good. there are monks whov immolated themselves in protest; taken their own lives to voice an opinion which will likely never be heard. some people will of course, and maybe theyll be on a history channel special, but for the most part people will just go 'did you know about those monks who set themselves on fire? fucking Sick dude.' then theres vanilla sky, where t.cruiseizzle subconsciously rejects the decision he made for himself over a hundred years ago and, within his own lucid dream, converts his world into a nightmare to the point where he is given a choice between reality and a lucid dream, either of which he would then engage with an erased memory. he chose reality, which probably sucks more than an endless dream rife with riches, womenfolk and technical support. so if you were aware that you had a choice to either be happier or to allow yourself to be tormented over a thought, or a truth of your own making, which you think is more noble, more true, moral, or whatever, what would you do. lacking self-definition, i am a mental mess, and i use bits and pieces of idealism, realism, or something inbetween, to justify, beautify, or denouce alternating thoughts and events i confront. if i dislike somebody, then i will loathe him an instant, then reline and think that i think little of it, becasue i am the bigger person and i hold no grudges; if he is truly a horrible person, then they will live his life out miserable and alone, i need not bear any negative feelings towards that person. but at the same time, i wish that sort of future upon him, banishing all pretenses of being noble, and the bottom line is i still hate him. you probably trick yourself along those lines as well. or youre honest about it, which might be better, but i dont know. and say i feel attached to somebody, i could say i love her, though in my mind the definition of love is ambiguous, its very existence uncertain, but i would feel the love regardless, because i am my own god, and attach meanings to neutral events and emphasize on what i will. so i love her, even without knowing whats going on, but feeling so strongly because thats the way i would have it, and thats the way it is. and thats the way it will always be, i can say. love comes in many forms, but each form no less profound than the other. i can love somebody like a fat kid loves cake, and then maybe after awhile ill still love somebody like a fat kid loves cake, minus the sexual stuff, but so many sources have told us all that love is love, regardless of its nature and, though i neither believe or disagree with that, it's there in my mind, and i will think of it when it serves me, and attempt to banish it from my mind when it pains me to second-guess it. i dont know, but im pretty sure that if i made the decision to stop loving someone, then i could. hating someone is entirely different for some reason i cant even think of, but is probably there. to stop loving someone, all you need to do is downplay your relationship with them, believe that there will be better, and aknowledge them as a person of lower significance to you than before. thats the bottom line, no romanticization. at least thats what im believing as im writing this sentence, and the one before, and even if i think differently by the end of this chances are im not going back to change anything. an electronic tribute to my frame of mind at 11:59pm. i think im still just bitter, though things could not have ended better. well they could have, but things shouldnt be the way i would have them otherwise, and people are unequal anyways. im just having a shit time sitting around waiting for college to happen. none of this will probably be on my mind in a week or two, and if thats the case then ill be a lot happier, but is that what i want? the price i pay for that happiness will be intangible, i probably wont even miss it, which is the true tragedy. it's like losing your memory. reality is relative, but there are some things i want to believe are immutable and profound regardless of what we think, and i guess i should just chill the fuck out now and wait to see whether tomorrow ill be the idealist, the realist, or a bastardized compromise of the two.

in this day and age

hypotheticaliticery: if you live a life without regret then you are either an asshole or you have alzheimer's disease, maybe even both, but never neither. regret isnt a virtue, but lack of regret shows either an unforgivable indifference to yourself and others or the personality of a self-appointed deity. equally shitty is a superficial apology designed to cover your failure to aknowledge your larger mistakes. "Oh Jen, I'm sorry I made you watch me kill your babies." whats wrong with this apologetic statement? yes, it must have been pretty disgusting for jen to watch me kill her babies, but what i find even more disgusting is my failure to actually apologize for killing her babies. if i were jen, id rather have elmer never speak to me again than recieve that halfassed apology. if i never spoke to her again, for all jen knows i could just be too ashamed of my crime to talk about it ever again; with my apology, my utter indifference to the act is flamingly clear. jen and i were friends once, but friendship is a huge investment. true friendship is founded upon trust and all that quantumshit, but how could anyone ever trust a babykiller, especially a babykiller hiding behind a mask of humanistic piety? why would anybody ever be friends with somebody who does hurricane relief in new orleans and preaches elevated codes of morality, then turns around and with the same hands and mouth throttles and eats children? even if we live in a world which allows cannibalism, because anything is better than having sex and giving each other stds, i cant let it go, because elmer isnt sorry he killed my babies. but still, we can be friends right? elmer and jen have been acting normally ever since the incident, though hell knows whats going in their separate minds, and most people dont even know jen ever had babies, somehow. it's almost like nothing ever happened, kinda like that movie the forgotten na mean? but the mom remembers, and she flips a bitch. but jen cant flip a bitch because she exists within an elaborately structured social webwork unlike the mom in forgotten, who had no friends, and flipping a bitch doesnt do shit because we're dealing with elmer, not aliens. jens been hiding the fact that she had babies from everyone and promised never to talk about them, so now she has to keep her smoldering pile of blasted thoughts and emotions to herself because the first question you would get if you go around saying 'this one asshole killed my babies and im very upset and disappointed' would be "shie son, you had babies?" and that wouldnt be good. so what are elmer and i? nice to each other. friends? ehhh. you killed my fucking babies. k now im elmer. i dont kill babies anymore, i was never actually a full-fledged babyeater. just caught up in the moment that one time i guess. now all i do is go to school and new orleans. a blind retard without legs may say that im a changed person, but the average prokaryote with down syndrome can see that i either just dont get it, or im a coward. at this rate, jens never going to forgive me, not because (nowimjen) im an unforgiving bitch but because theres a fundamental problem elmer isnt getting at. an expression of profound and genuine regret, maybe a little chat, is likely all itd take to fix things. they were crappy babies anyways. but you're sucking, you're saying the wrong things, or nothing at all. 'sorry i made you watch me kill your baby'? WRONG. 'oh damn, did i spill blood on your floor? sorry about that'? WRONG. 'damn this dead baby smells bad, sorry i didnt think doing this would aggravate the olfactory senses to such an extent'? WRONG BITCH. if you address the root issue and douse it with the flaming pesticide of divine repentance, then everything else is a given, but until then you're doing worse than nothing. dont be mad. sorry i killed your baby

DC was pretty sexy, but i dont feel like posting a rundown on that now. i have until feb17 to make up my spanish semifinal, and i dont need to take gov immediately. if theres anything i learned this year it's the fact that skipping semifinals week is pretty bitchin. on the flipside, in choir we have moved onto singing in german, as though cuban folksongs werent enough. but my last 37 posts have been on school, so im going to skillfully transition to another subject. senior retreat. it was pretty awesome, maybe not lifechanging in the traditional sense of Bam-enlightenment, but lifechanging in the sense that everything is subtly lifechanging, and then some. the school decided that it loved us and decided to get us pimp buses to ride in to the site of retreaticity, pimp buses from hell that is. buses with bathrooms should be banned from modernized societies, and the only other difference separating these 'better' buses from normal buses was the fact that there was carpet, on the ceiling. so we're rolling along and we take about an hour to get to the hills where the site is, and bam. our buses are too wide to get to get up the path. so the people with authority decided to have this one minibus take some people up the hill, come back down, load people, shift and repeat, except each trip took 30 mins so the busdrivers decided that life is overrated to drove up the hill, which was pretty much madstorm of delight except for the parts where we almost flipped off and plummeted into the ocean. luckily enough my bus driver was king of bus drivers and actually made it to the camp without killing anyone, even though he was driving backwards for awhile at one point. so we're at this campsite, this jewish campsite, and we find out that the buildings had for the most part burned down, and that all that was left were the living quarters, so pretty much everything involving a building took place in one of two flamingly large tents. and now ill tell the rest of my senior retreat tale through pictures. many photos courtesy of cousin paul

it's been two months of wild abandon.