If I say 'my head is killing me!', indicating some kind of extreme headache, and then I end up dead, is that homicide or suicide?  Medical experts have dodged this bullet of ambiguity and settled on the neutral phrase of 'natural causes.' 

Whenever I go somewhere with a large crowd, I think I should dress up like Waldo.

There are two dogs in the house where I'm living: a male dog that has a high, shrill bark and a female dog that has a low, growly bark.  They must be so embarrassed. 

"No one asked you!"  If everyone had to be asked to speak, no one in the world would speak at all.

It must be terribly hard to not lust in Spanish speaking countries, because in places like those you can lust after tables, or chairs, or fruit! About half of their objects are females!

I hate mist; it's half-hearted rain. I say to the sky, 'If you're going rain, then just do it already.' 

Though some might think this phrase has a clear meaning, once investigated it becomes quite ambiguous.  A rare and freakishly literal person might think the person asking this desires to organize a communal ice bath.  However, others, who are more used to the phrase's connotation, might intepret this phrase to generally mean, "Let's get together before we figure out what we're really going to do."

But both of these interpretations are wrong.  The fact is, chilling is in itself an activity that is one option among many for friends to do together.  Loosely defined, it means "An intentionally perpetuated state of low mental intensity and little or no phsyical movement."  It might strike you that this definition makes chilling sound a lot like conscious sleep.  It is. 

There are several other typical characteristics of chilling, though they need not necessarily be part of a chill time.  First, it is done by group of males, and second, it is done in a basement (preferably with a good chill mood to it, which is actually a sixth sense males possess: identifying the chillability of a basement.  If you ever hear a male say to someone, "You have a really nice basement," he actually means, "I'd really like to chill down here sometime.") 

Believe it or not, people get together, and they chill.  This is the lone activity being done, which is interesting because it is an activity that is the perpetuated state of not doing an activity.  If you didn't know that it was its own activity, you wouldn't be able to appreciate this beautiful paradox that weaves itself so harmoniously into this idea that to some seems like the ultimately counterintuitive plan: trying to do nothing.

So far you should have pictured for a normal chilling situation, several guys in a dim basement sitting around on couches in a dulled state of mind.   If not a person who chills regularly, you might protest that such an activity seems worthless in terms of relationships.  Actually, quite the opposite.  When sitting in the presence of other people who are chilling, sinking together with them lower and lower into a mental abyss of nothingness, you actually are experiencing an intimacy unreachable in your usual conscious state.  By using your minds to create this shared atmosphere of docile mental activity, where you can feel the mental stillness, you are, in essence, loving them.  It is a really beautiful thing, actually.

Which brings us to another normative feature of chilling with other people.  It is perhaps inevitable that during chill time a stupid yet profound conversation may take place as result of a stupid yet profound question being asked by someone.  Here is an example.  All conversations are of course spoken extremely slow, and in the kind of tone of voice you always seem to use when saying something incredibly stupid:

Guy 1: "Hey guys, isn't it weird how you're always with yourself? Like, wherever you go you'll always be there too.  I eat with myself.  I go to sleep with myself.  Just can't get away."
Guy 2: "Dude, that's a really, really good point."
Guy 3: "Yeah, dude.  But then again, you can't even see yourself.  Like I can see you, but I am me, so I can't see myself in the room."
Guy 1: "Yeah."
Guy 2: "Woh.  How do we even know we're here?"
Guy 1: "You just gotta believe, man. You gotta have faith."
Guy 3: "I don't know. I can't even see my neck.  What if it's not there? Then what?"
Guy 1: "But dude, you can see your neck in the mirror."
Guy 3: "Yeah...(pause)...What about before they had mirrors?"
Guy 1: "Mmmmm."
Guy 2: "Maybe they used water."

It is simply true that there are some conversations you can't have while experiencing your normal mental livileness.  The logic of these conversations is simultaneously awesome and wrong. 

In all these ways, chilling is really an escape from reality.  With all the hustle and bustle of the daily rush, chilling is almost a slice of heaven.  Haven't you ever wondered if during this hectic thing called life you just hung up the mental phone line to all your worries and just stopped?  That is what chilling is; the closest you can get to just stopping.

By this point you might have noticed the only thing that seems to missing from the portrait I'm painting is drugs.  It's true; chillers seem to meet all the criteria of drug users.  But what I think is that drug users are actually just really bad at chilling.  They need the drugs to help them achieve the state; although good chill music (practically a genre to males who chill) can be a helpful and legal replacement.  So chilling is something you can actually be good at; my friend Nate King is really, really good at it.  He actually introduced me to the concept.  I can still remember the day: where we were, what the day looked like, everything. To a person who had been brainwashed by life's implicit memo that you always have to be doing something, it blew my mind.  

Philip: So what do you guys wanna do?
Nate: Eh, nothing. This is good.
Philip: But we're not doing anything.
Nate: Exactly.
Philip: *head explodes*

So, do you chill?  Are you good at it?  And lastly...do you wanna chill?

Thanksgiving is wonderful.  Think about it for a moment: which element of it isn't just oozing with wonderfulness from all sides?  It's essentially wonderful people gathered in wonderful places to delight in a wondeful meal.  And you get to be thankful for all the wonderful things that you have been blessed with!  It's just wonderful!  But not only would I claim that it's wonderful, but it's really wonderful!

....Now how about being thankful for having copious adjectives to choose from, eh? 

Adjectives, I find, are the most underappreciated part of speech.  Which truly doesn't make any sense, because adjectives are just so wonderful.    

Have a marvelous Thanksgiving everyone!

You are never yourself when others are present.  Even when alone, when others are in your mind, when you have in your head the thoughts and behavior of other people, you are not truly experiencing individual thought.  When you observe your surroundings, late in the night, with no one around to disturb or invade your unsullied thoughts, you can feel and think as a person, and mystery fills the air.  The gentle wind, the towering sky, all the motionless space, is around you, lighting the fire of an incredible distinction; I'm alive, and all this is not.  What great comedy and profundity is this, that I am alone here, where I never expected to be, thinking to myself.  With no one else present to prevent the authenticity of my thought, I am free to think what I truly think.  What is all this, this dead matter around me that at least possesses a liveliness and face, unlike the barrenness of other planets, and I standing amidst it, alive, moving within it?  Such wind across my face.  Oh how unready my daily heart is to see what lies behind it all.  How blurred the sight of my thoughts is, to know the force that is responsible for me finding myself here in this infinitely curious position.  This sight, of nature merely waiting around, as a clock does tick, yet I am alive!  When was I dull?  When was I low in feeling?  What day was it that I drudged through the muck in my mind?  How unnecessary is my very self, and what rarity this ability to see and think is, and yet I have it!  Perhaps seeing through my eyes is right now in all the universe the most peculiar thing occurring; could life be anything but troubling because of its inexplicable presentness despite its overwhelming rarity?  Much is not alive; yet I am.  Most people live lives based on the assumptions generated by large crowds expelling thoughts from their sights, and thus know not what it is to feel not only life, but its rarity as well, coursing through the body.  I am alive, and I am not sure I will be able to recover from the fact.

In the stillness, my thoughts dwell, and I realize the only thing that life ever was.  No matter what muffles life's true nature, it can always be refound, in the empty spaces of nature, where the tranquility strips away the noise of falsity that suggest life is normal.

Somewhere in history, there has been someone whose life went unrecorded, but loved life vivaciously.  The very thing it is, full of pain, relationships, and thoughts, all evaporating at death, is beautiful and tragic simultaneously.  And this person would walk off alone, laughing to himself because he was alive at all, and off into the woods to know himself and the world he was in.  On the ledge of a cliff he would stop and oversee the mystery of life, and feel it consume him, and know that it meant something, and was worth living.  And though undocumented, I know somewhere this man lived and died.  When I am lost in this mire, the deluge of unknowledge, I will return to the only and ultimate situation; the lonely presence of my thoughts. 

Look at how shocked we are when we first enter it.

I have been reluctant to write about my thoughts on relationships, because after reading them a person who doesn't know me might be compelled to imagine me as a disgruntled cynic that hates love and wants to kill married people for fun.  But, supposedly and hopefully, by making clear that I am worried people might think this, I have simultaneously prevented them from doing so.  

Although since I have made a point in my actual life to not care what people may or may not think of me, and since the online world is profoundly less real and important than real life, I suppose you may imagine me as you wish.  [Dryly] Who knows.  Maybe I do want to kill married people. 

Thus, here are some recent thoughts I've had.

Any and everyone in my generation is subject to a good deal of 'relationship influence' from a myriad of different sources, but mainly from friends who are actually in relationships.  And living in the context of surrounding relationships does a funny thing to you when you're single.  Subconsciously, what it does is create a category in your mind of the fact that there is a potential person lurking out there for you.  Because relationships permeate our culture, anything that is a reference to the mating process is a tacit reminder to singles that they are single.  Thus, singles take the fact of their singleness into account almost all the time.  It is a way of looking at life that knows very profoundly that you are single, like it is as much a fact about you as the clothes you have on.

As a person that has this mental category of 'relationships' that has its status set on 'vacant', every person of the opposite gender you now meet has an invisible thread connecting you because they are a potential relationship prospect.  However slight this automatic preset connection is between singles who know they're single is, it is nevertheless undeniably there.  It is the result of living with the live idea of a possible relationship, a possibility which results from participating in an atmosphere of thought which advocates you being in a relationship, an atmosphere which is created and powered by the relationships around you.   

The point is, single people often know they're single really, really well.  It's like the sun.  Not only is it possible to physically see the sun (which would be meditating on the fact you're single), but it casts light over everything you see, which is the constant subcsoncious realization of your singleness. 

Now in my experience this phenomenon can make you simply miserable.  Living in a way where you are subconsciously expecting a future event that will somehow complement your current existence is a truly depressing state.  Picture a world where everyone walked around in rain coats because it might rain.  Are these people happy?  Should they be wearing these rain coats? 

Imagine, then, cutting all the invisible threads to other people that represent the perpetually live possibility of them being 'the one.'  What if you just threw the entire mental category of singleness in your mental trash can?  What if you were no longer a puzzle piece with legs, waiting to connect to its complementary end, but were a portrait in and of yourself?  What if everyday you simply acted like you would if you had no idea you would ever be in a relationship?  What if you were simply 'you'?

Now, I have no idea what you're thinking (but would love to hear it), but to me, that is a truly glorious thought.  And don't take my thoughts on this further than I have stated; maybe one day I will get married, but think: does this prospect alone necessitate me to live my life bracing for the impact, as though it were perpetually imminent?  It might even be the case that shedding the skin of singleness ensures the authenticity of any relationship should it appear.  In other words, shutting down your relationship radar could possibly reduce the possibility of crush fallacies. 

Besides, I have been working on my mating call, and it's getting pretty good.  So whenever I feel like it's time to settle down and get married all I really need is my front porch and a decent amp system. 

How many crush fallacies are there?  I count three. 

1. Liking our idea of someone, and not really them.

2. Liking the fact that we like someone, instead of actually liking them.

3. Liking someone, as in being attracted by their appearance, but not liking the actual them.

All three of these create the illusion of genuine attraction.  I have committed all three fallacies, but the one I probably commit the most frequently is number 3 (although the different fallacies tend to work together quite well). 

Sometimes I wonder if having a crush is in any way ever an indication of a true state of affairs, or if it is simply produced by an erroneous combination of my imagination and emotions.  Perhaps when I truly am willing to commit to loving someone because of who they actually are, I won't even experience what is called having a "crush" on them.   

Are there any other fallacies I missed?

Think about the enterprise of a critic for a moment.  When I think of a critic, I always imagine a grumpy old guy with permanently cringed facial features, so it looks like his face is a perpetual snarl.  He's also probably sitting back in a chair chewing on a cigar with a newspaper folded in one hand.

What are critics?  To me, they are people that sit back, look at something, and say, "Ehhh, now I'll tell you what I think of that...REALLY LOUD!!!"  They are like the self-appointed gods of opinions on planet earth whose judgments possess trump status.  

Imagine the sequence with me: someone does something, and there's some guy that rates it according to his internal reaction, and his assessment holds some sort of special weight to it.  But why is his opinion more qualified than others'?  Does that make sense to anyone?  Has this person done anything particularly interesting, besides asserting his opinion really loud?  Were these people deemed "critics" beamed here from planet Truth?  Did they sell their souls to the devil in exchange for always having true opinions? 

Whenever I read a movie review, or a critique of some politician, I never place any value at all in what I am reading.  What does this person know?  They might be right, they might be wrong—just like the rest of us.  For instance, if it's a movie, I'm sure for every movie I've liked there are a bunch of professional critics who hated it.  There are also probably critics who appreciated it.  So why does it matter that there are any critics at all?

For almost any artistic masterpiece in history—muscial pieces, books, paintings—there's been some guy who thought he knew what he was talking about that hated it.  Almost everyone hated Beethoven's 5th Symphony when it debuted, and it's solidified itself as one of the most brilliant pieces of music ever written. 

And the problem is not just that these people believe in the oxymoron of a "true opinion," but that they don't do anything besides talk.  I admit that people can be qualified to say that other people aren't up to par, if they're in the right position to do so.  But the critics I'm talking about do nothing.  All they do is criticize.  It sometimes seems like the assumption of criticism is that the critic is a paragon of awesomeness who will now tell these—cretins—where they have failed.   

The worst thing is when someone tries to criticize someone personally who they don't know.  What do you know of what goes on in their minds, of what they think about? 

From the outside and while doing absolutely nothing, there are only three things you can criticize.  And those three things are critics, myspace, and facebook. 

It is weird and startling how fast the past is being created.  I watch as people pass by the window, and then immediately replay them walking past the window in my head.  Where is that now?  The motion just happened, and I can envision it clearly and accurately, but it is gone in the very moment it happened. The now is forever retreating into the past, so that all the activity surrounding me is continually being drowned in time. What becomes of it?  Is it incomprehensibly gone? Does it make sense to discuss the becoming fate of the current view I have with the current thought behind it?  The images in movies are stored, and can be retrieved.  But the detailed colored reality I see moving around me every moment—does it possess any value of being? Or is this view just to be known by me now knowing it, and then to disintegrate into the laughing well of an infinite fall?  For the angles of the faces I see are only seen by me in this minute, and will not hold the power of replication.

As I look around I imagine faded images of people in the location they had just walked, images which gradually dim in intensity until disappearing completely.  The past is being created like mist off our backs, and is brightest and most tangible in the moment right after it occurs.  But our minds cannot match time's relentless attention, and we can remember but a thin sliver of all past sights.  

Thus now is all we know.  The current moment is forever coming and forever going—and thus never really here.  The present is infinitely exploding all around us. 

Life is just weird.  How ridiculous these things are we do everyday.

Driving.  Ever imagine drivers without their cars?  To see people just floating above the road in the sitting position? Arms outstrecthed, all flying quickly through the air?

Eating.  While eating I stop with eyes wide.  What am I doing?  I'm putting this stuff inside me?  What!  Most things I don't put inside me, but this I do?  This is mad!  And it is standard to meet with others, so we may put stuff inside us together?

Talking.  I can make noise, and this noise makes sense to others?  Most noise, the sounds in the world, is just noise.  But some noise is noise with meaning?  And I can choose to make this meaningful noise? 

Talking on the phone.  I can speak into this thing, and somewhere else someone hears me?  If I talk into anything else, my voice doesn't come out of another of that object.  But two people, far apart, can hear each other by making noise into this certain piece of matter? 

Sleeping.  I lie down and wait.  Eventually this makes me unconscious.  My thoughtless, sightless body lies there motionlessly until some time later when I start seeing and thinking again.  What crazy thing is this!  Why does my body do such a thing?  I am terrified as I go to bed, thinking, what am I doing! What is going on!

Who expected these things, that they should be called normal?  What madness we adapt our minds to!  We are all so sleepy.