Month: August 2006

  • I need faith tonight.

     Sometimes people have friends, even more rarely so good friends.  But most of the people in the world you will never meet, and most people you see and talk to will never be your friend. 

    In the world is humanity, and in humanity there is depravity: hatred prompts violence prompts death.  Yet in the cacophony and clash of the nations, two may find the rare and strong bond of friendship.  In the midst of death, a face of love (as put in Dead Man Walking).  If not good circumstances, one has that bond. 

    There is no way I can replicate the beautiful poetry that has been written about friendship, and there is no way the beautiful poetry can replicate the greatness of actual friendship.  But I have known friendship, and tonight I report news that has given my head to pandemonium.

    I lost a good friend. 

    No, they didn't die. 

    If you thought boys don't cry, you were wrong.  It may not come as easy, but when the dam breaks, it breaks. 

  • Good day to you and your household!


    Often times I forget peoples names after meeting them.  Even after consciously repeating their name in my head ten times after meeting them, I still forget what it is.  The strategy of listening for other people to say their name can get frustrating because whenever that's your strategy for some odd reason people stop addressing the unidentified person by name, almost as if they knew to do it to spite you. 


    Today I caught a break.


    There is a girl on the cross country team and I see her in the halls of school and talk to her every now and then.  But I couldn't remember her name! 


    So today I went to the podiatrist and just as I was waiting for a doctor to fill something out so that I could leave, an assistant goes to the door leading from the office to the waiting room and calls, "Marrissa!  You're up."  A moment later I see the girl from the cross country team walk through the door and a shot of ecstasy hit my brain.  What a break!  Of all things I thought to be solved at the doctor's office, memorizing a person's name I did not think was one of them.  Ah, what a break.


    Another great way to memorize a person's name is by writing a xanga post of a story about them.


    Sorry I haven't been writing much here lately, I've been undergoing a massive writing project that demanded all my free time. 


    Cheerios! 

  • The way a nine-year-old thinks:


    Paul:  Hey Philip, whenever I talk to that one guy I see that big thing in his neck.
    Philip:  It's called an Adam's Apple.  We all have one.
    Paul:  Yeah, well, I always see his going up and down and stuff.
    Philip:  It's probably because his neck is a little longer so his chin doesn't cover it up.
    Paul:  (thinking) ...Do giraffes have them?


    (realizing the way he thought)


    Philip:  Haha! I don't know, Paul, I don't know.


    Enjoy siblings. 

  • Points of interest.  By light of the bullet:

    • The only way I allow myself to eat fast food is by forcefully blanking out before I order and eat it, when really in my more conscious moments, I know what's in there is not something I want to be eating.
    • I like to play red rover with couples holding hands in the hallway.
    • My ideal night of sleep is somewhere between the hybernation of a grizzly bear and the dormancy of a volcano. 
    • I strongly oppose our government's disregard for the principle of symmetry in regards to currency.  Why did they have to make the presidents off-center?!
    •  I grew up thinking that if you dropped a battery it would explode.
    • Punctuality is important.  Putting the word "fashionably" in front of the word "late" does not justify anything.
    • A favorite thing to do of mine is listening to a person who likes to talk.  You have to fiddle around by saying different things, but soon, they're going. 

    A fond, funny, and fine farewell to all of you!

  • While drawing with chalk on our driveway I began to converse with my little brother.  The logic of a child can seem so rational, and yet funny where they deviate from the correct thinking.  Paul is nine years old.  Observe:


    Philip:  Hey, Paul, guess how I cut my finger.
    Paul:  How?
    Philip:   I cut it on a soap dispenser.
    Paul:   Uh...what's a soap ex-penser?
    Philip:   It's where soap comes from.
    Paul:   (not understanding what a soap dispenser is) Where does soap come from?
    Philip:   I think it comes from sharks.
    Paul:   Woh...are they alive when they get it from them?
    Philip:  Haha, no, they are dead. 
    Paul:  Oh, ok.  So you cut your finger on the shark's tooth, then?   


    (At this moment in the conversation I stopped drawing on the sidewalk and paused to think about the logical connection he had just been making.  It was simply wonderful.)


    Philip:  Um, Paul ... I cut my finger on a soap dispenser, they're the things you press on to get the soap from when you wash your hands.
    Paul:  Ohh.
    Philip:  Yeah, haha. 


    Goodnight to you all. 

  • Greetings to one and all!

    Is it not odd how humans fall asleep?  When we lay down to go to sleep, we may be turning over thoughts from the day, but then, after a time we cannot estimate, the last thoughts falls and we change from awake to asleep, a transition we do not consciously realize.   However, a few weeks back I gripped the impossible.  Do not suppose me to kid -- I caught myself falling asleep.  My thoughts had become hushed whispers and my hands were on the doors to dreamland when BAM!  My eyes shot open from their slow decline that resembled a garage door closing.  The reaction in my mind, of course, was shock and jubilee.  I felt like I had beaten the nature of sleep, that which says we may never witness the moment a human falls into slumber.  In the very moment my body had attempted to cross the line into sleep, I had caught it, like pouncing on and ensnaring an elusive snake.  I cocked a "Ha! Ha!" and spit it out, wishing that someone from Guiness had been there to record my feet.  After ten seconds of rejoicing and analysing what had happened I laid my head back down and let sleep spitefully overtake me.   

    It is interesting to me how an activity can temporarily affect your thinking.  I will give two examples I know.  First, after playing speed scrabble with a few friends of mine we walked down a street with many stores and shops.  I instantaneously attempted to rearrange the letters to the first store sign I saw, searching for other words it might spell as if it were an allotment of scrabble letters.  I laughed at the scrabble programming of my head and walked on, helping my brain to comprehend I was no longer playing the splendid game. 

    The second example I am sure many are more familiar with.  Just today I had just finished reading a novel and was walking out of Starbucks when I began thinking in complete sentences, describing my actions, as if it were a descriptive passage in a book.  "The boy walked out of the coffee shop, glanced at the busy traffic in the street, but soon returned his attention to his footing so as not to stumble on the way to his car..." 

    I bid you all adieu!  I leave you with a quote from Harvey.

    "You know, when I was young my mother used to say to me, 'In this world, Elwood,' -- she would always call me Elwood, she would say, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be O, so smart, or O, so pleasant.'  Well, for many years I was smart.  I'd recommend pleasant."

  • Welcome, welcome!  

    There is a road nearby my city that has a instance where it curves slightly to one way, and the speed limit for cars  is dramatically reduced from 35 MPH regularly to 15 MPH during the curve.  My wonder about the issue is whether a police officer would give you a speeding ticket for driving too fast on the curve, realizing that you could probably safely drive on it at 50 MPH and it is only about 30 meters long.  

    Most people would like to see what it would be like to live in the future.  But what I realize more and more is that if you study history in detail enough, you feel like you are living in the future.

    The night approaches.  Rather than walking casually towards me as a friend, it chases me down like a giant bowling ball on a downhill.  How come the days waste away like paper in a fire?  Where do they go anyways?  Did I live today just so it could become a part of history?  Will I even remember what I did on this particular day ever again?  Just as water evaporates into the air, so the days evaporate into history.  And just as I cannot comprehend the presence of invisible gas everywhere, so I cannot comprehend the mystery of the disappearing day, a day spent doing nothing in specific amount, a day never remembered again, but twenty-four hours spent as a value of time to simply exist, rather than to act.

    "Be very careful, then, how you live -- not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil." 
                                                               - The Apostle Paul

    The days are evil, my friends. 

    What did you do today?

  • My dad attempts to solve problems the way most men do: by using their all-superior male-reasoning skills.  For example:  glancing at the bag my father sees he should cook the chicken wings at 400 degrees, but thinks, "Will not the chicken cook faster at 500 degrees?!


    I am not sure Descartes would have agreed with his methods. 

  • What a fright!  My good compatriots, heed my advice, do not place a lifesize cardboard cutout of a dark-dressed human facing towards whoever is entering the garage.  For an air of uneasiness accompanies a person who is walking around a home where all other occupants have decided for sleep, and if that person so happens to enter the garage and catch immediate glimpse of the dark person facing them from not ten feet away, he or she may just be scared half to death. 


    If you care to know, it was 2 A.M.,  I was conveying a plastic bottle to the recycling, and the cardboard cutout was of Aragorn.  AH, the terror!

  • A selection from a sermon by Gregory Boyd:


    "I have in the last three weeks been confronted by three people who have said something like this, and I understand where they're coming from, 'I think it's true, and I want to become a Christian, it's just that I don't like any of them.'"