Monday, March 30, 2009

And today's Hearting goes to.....


Vampires! I've always found the mythos that surrounds them rather fascinating. I don't believe they exist in reality, but find a great many authors and writers variations and versions of them rather interesting. Let me specify that I'm definitely not a vampire freak. I don't have any desire to look like them, wear makeup resembling them, or dress in vamp clothes, or put on fake fangs. I don't dream about them, or believe they actually exist, waiting for one to show up one day to turn me into one. That's just a bunch of silliness. The thing I like most about the Vampire stories I read/watch in tvs and movies is when they walk the line of humanity. They struggle with the beast of their vampiric nature in order to retain, or recapture their humanity. My recommended reads/watchs would include Underworld and it's sequel, HBO's True Blood TV series, The Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series by Laurell K. Hamilton.

(Spoiler alert) This theme is actually the main reason for my fondness for the Twilight series. Having read the first two books and seen the first movie, I'd have to say that the overall story is a bit weak, and there are some specifics that I really could do without (can anyone say sparkly vampires?), but I really enjoy the read. The first reason is Edward's interest in retaining his humanity and self control. The second is that it's a very easy read. None of the concepts are challenging, I'm not trying to figure out anything terribly complex. I'm basically watching this story about a love sick teenage girl, who I can relate to, having been a lovesick teenager myself, and a bi-polar, kinda wacky romantic guy/vampire. Having grown up with people in my life being bi-polar, I have learned to deal with them. I actually find it to some degree endearing for some odd reason. I can't really explain that one. Bottom line for the series, not literary genius, but I'm not looking for it. I'm looking for some interesting variations on the mythos of Vamps and some mushy lovey dovey stuff and maybe a little action/plot furtherence. I don't expect a lot out of it, and I'm not disappointed.
Guten Morgen, und wenn ich nicht sehen können, Guten Nachtmittag, guten Abend und gute Nacht!

Sunday, March 29, 2009

AM inspiration

I sit at 4:30AM, unable to sleep for my own folly, with my rather large afternoon nap. Sitting here, simultaneously in a funk and clear in differing ways, I wonder what the inspiration I'm feeling really is, and when/where it will truly manifest itself. Recently I've had a lot of inspiring moments, of clarity, truth, beauty and love, and I've had a number of pathetic ne'er do well moments that my first instinct is to chastise myself for and be ashamed of.

I recently heard on a movie a line something to the effect of shame/guilt is a useless emotion, there is nothing helpful about it. I disagree, it just seems that way because it's application is often backwards. From what I've been told, the average inmate doesn't see themselves as guilty, where the average person often feels far more guilty over things that could be considered trivial. I dare to think that this goes for the majority of society. It's ironic that the two most well known applications (or lack thereof) of guilt are people using it incorrectly. Guilt is supposed to be a thumbtack placed on your seat. Just a sharp reminder that you have stepped outside your moral boundaries for just a moment. If you've run rampant outside said moral boundaries, you forget what they are entirely and how guilt would apply to your life, so it's just easiest to say not guilty. The problem I have, which I believe is quite common, is that I will step closer to that moral barrier than I ever normally do, even if it's well inside according to most peoples standards, and I will rack myself with guilt over it. It can get debilitating. Granted, I'd say I've been much better about not debilitating myself in that way than I have in the past, but in small moments, it still happens.

One thing I truly believe about life on planet Earth is that everything is perfect. That's not to say that life is fair, or anywhere in the vicinity of equal, but our lives that we each live are perfect for us, because we spend every waking moment creating them. Down to the toothpaste we buy, or the twitch of an eyebrow. I was recently rather foolish and I misunderstood what I was told and didn't ask any clarifying questions. I am absolutely accountable for this. I ended up standing up a date unintentionally. This is not to say I left her sitting, waiting at a restaurant when I didn't show, but just that I didn't call her the day off to set specific plans because we are both, apparently, terrible at deciding what to do on a date. At this point I don't think another date will be scheduled, for the most part due to her feelings about me not calling. I must be honest in that I believe that's a rather harsh reaction to what happened, but well within her prerogative. I wouldn't want to convince her to go against her better judgement in order to go on a date with me, along with if she's really that unforgiving, what kind of a relationship am I really going to cultivate with her? I can't say for sure, but it definitely wouldn't be starting off on the best foot, so to speak. The misunderstanding I had in that conversation is life's way of giving me a reminder that I really need to ask clarifying questions if I'm not sure about a situation, or agreement I have with someone. That's what makes all our lives perfect for us.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Something a Bit Lighter

So on a lighter, much more surfacy, superficial level, I got a digital Camera the other day! Yay! I had one before, but it was cheap and broke within a week. I got it through a bonus program at work and didn't want to fight with management at work through the 10-14 weeks it would take to get a new one, just to have another crappy one. this time I bought it off amazon and I'm happy with the features, screen size and pixel quality, so hopefully you'll start seeing more photos of me and my life, instead of just talk and words. I am by no means a master photographer, but I wasn't under the impression any of you thought that, regardless, you might see some really terrible pictures up here, just bear with me please.

I wanted to Heart something today. I'm gonna go with a double heart of Webcomics in general and Penny Arcade as a webcomic in particular. I'm kind of a superfan when it comes to webcomics, I follow about 12-14 of them. Thank goodness I found out how to use RSS feeds, that made life simpler. instead of going to the websites to get comics, the comics come to me, via RSS. I love Penny Arcade for a number of reasons. First of all, the reason they named themselves Penny Arcade is because they consider themselves cheap thrills. I find this amusing because it's a phrase my mother has used for years whenever anything relatively exciting/pleasing that surprised her she would express that she never minded the surprise because it was cheap thrills. Anyway, one of the other reasons I love PA is because it so succinctly expresses the lack of connection with reality some portions of society has, for example...
Penny Arcade!
Feel free to click on the pic to link directly to the PA website. I simultaneously laughed my butt off and was rather sad when I read this comic, because of how close to reality this portrayal of society is. With that I'll bid you adieu and good day.

A Moment on Correspondence

To be clear, I use correspondence in terms of relationships and connections (although not the mathematical ones as that definition actually pertains to). I will refrain from relating the specific events, for privacy's sake(and not my own, I've noticed I can be a bit more open than most people feel comfortable with). To put it simply, I related to a friend and with little knowledge and no experience of their personal situation, and according to them, my insight was genius, almost telepathic.

I would disagree, I believe that I've let down barriers that hold a great deal of us, as humans, back. The biggest, and I mean biggest problem we can have with connecting to other people is to feel like we're alone. Be it feeling like you can't express your thoughts/feelings well enough, or that it wouldn't matter if you could express it because nobody gets your situation, or can really know how you feel. I know it may sound slightly ridic when I say it like that, but it's a reality that can feel inescapable when you are within it's jaws. I know that within the myriad possibilities of complex interconnected feelings that we as human beings feel everyday, there are an infinite number of variations on the hints of flavor based on certain base emotions. You can get a bit more complex than this, but in the end, in my experience, everything you do/feel is either based in either love or fear. Period. You could even distill it further to everything is based in either creation or destruction, specifically love of creation, or fear of destruction.

Getting back to the point. After schooling myself to think in terms of love/fear, everything becomes much simpler. Seeing how a person has been living in fear and letting people mistreat and abuse them and relating to that becomes much easier as well. I know what it's like to allow others to mistreat me, because I'm afraid of losing something good, or causing something bad to happen. Just because the something bad happening and something good possibly lost is different, doesn't make the emotions involved any different, at the base level. It seems to me that people get bogged down in specifics that don't really matter in the end, not in relating to other people. If your father beat you as a child and because of this you always give in to any father figure in your life, is that any more important than me as a child being ridiculed for being fat and being self conscious, and choosing what clothes I wear, the people I hang out with and the way I deserve to be treated because of that? NO! At least not in terms of something happened in both our lives that we use to hold ourselves down, and back from the most open, loving, feeling, happiest ways of living our life. Does it really matter if it's keeping us from being happy?

Our perception of other peoples problems as being trivial is the barrier between connecting a great many people. Regardless of how monumental and earth shattering you might consider a life changing event you had as a child, or teenager, or as an adult, you could track down someone that thinks it's trivial, especially when compared to their problems. The thing that can unify us all in strength, and in moving forward with our lives is not the trivial events themselves, but our reactions to it, the decisions we made because of it, and the actions we took to make that pain go away. Once we focus on that, so much of what was in the way, seems to just disappear.

Off the soapbox for a minute. I appreciate any interest you have in reading my words, whether the intent was to take them to heart and apply them in your lives if you haven't already, or take it as ammunition for mudslinging. Either way I am grateful, because you can still build a house out of mud. I don't expect everything I say to be accurate, logical or even sane %100 of the time. In fact, I count on the fact that it won't and just ask you as I have before, let me know. Let me know what you think, how you feel about what I said and if it seems like I've lost all my marbles.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Roller Coaster Ride Baby

I believe the excitement implied in the title of this blog is misleading, but I'm gonna leave as is, because I want to remember the song that I've associated with it for ever. I just ponder tonight, far far too late into the following morning, that life has it's ups and downs and while today wasn't tops especially in the context of the three previous, it was better than it has been a lot of the time and better than a lot of people can complain. I play what's called tabletop RPGs. The most famous of these is D&D or Dungeons and Dragons, for those layman who read this. If that doesn't explain it well enough, there's no point in elaborating without directly applied force to the noggin. I feel like I've committed to really playing with my Sunday group for the first time. Again for the laymen, I play a fictional character that I've created and decided nearly everything about. Today I was so invested in that character's goals and feelings that I had tears in my eyes and everybody stopped to pay attention to exactly what it was I was saying. Just earlier today I had though about leaving the group and starting one of my own. Now there's no way, I'm all in, the dice are cast and I'm there with all the frustrations and victories to savor.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

What's in a name

I just want to dwell on another three things that are interconnected for a moment. The name of this blog is English Alphabet Derivative which is from something that one of my favorite comedians ever Eddie Izzard, who I've talked about before. The full saying is "A collection of letters, derived from the english alphabet, signifying all that is me." I named my blog that because I believe with that to some degree all of life's experience is in some way derived from something else. That seems a bit of a jump to go from the english language to the meaning of life, but stay with me here. As humans we learn by association, babies actually start with their strongest sense, that of smell, to associate the scent of their mother to their presence. We build on this experience and very basic others, like being hungry, or sleepy, and as we grow older, the experiences (tend to) grow more varied and complex until we are adults and there are so many things that seem so basic a part of human life that it should be universally known, but if a person's experiences have generally differed from most people's from birth and even times before that, then they can percieve that basic fundamentality of human life as totally foreign. In the english language very few sentences have never been said before, despite it being a complex language and possessing seemingly useless variations at times, in order to truly be unique, you must include some complexity of the your human experience in your expressions. Saying "I am hungry" is nearly meaningless by itself. Saying "It's 5am and I'm hungry because I stayed up with a friend who was in trouble and we've been on the road since 9 o'clock yesterday morning on a road trip" actually expresses a small something, in my estimation. Of course, if your reading my blog, you ought to be assuming that everything here is in my estimation, unless disclaimed otherwise.

Secondly, I had trouble coming up with a screen name after cycling through a lot of garbage for my Myspace account. I settled on "A Collection of Letters Signifying All That is Me" as a shortened version of that Eddie Izzard Quote, because that's all that would fit in the space they'd give me. Mr Izzard was talking about how names are really just a bunch of letters people stick together as they name their children, or themselves that are supposed to give a glimpse of who that person is. I guess that it does give the most minimal of glimpses, but the name becomes more meaningful with life experience associated, ie you get to know the person. I found it far more interesting to give a long drawn out explanation up front of my name, as a name, rather than one or two words that I have a couple of personal associations about random stuff most people wouldn't know and even more people wouldn't care about if I took the time to explain what the hell it meant. I've never had anyone ask me what my name means, just a couple who tell me that it's way too long., to which I respond, then Myspace should shorten the number of letters available to use.

The last is a phrase which I have grown increasingly fond of since I started this Blog. My blog URL, if you've not noticed, is HTTP://polymathendeavor.blogspot.com/ and I decided on the phrase polymath endeavor because it desribes my aim in life since I was a small boy. For clarity's sake, I'll define the phrase. Endeavor is the better known word of the two, meaning by it's simplest definition is to make an effort or strive. Polymath means a person of great and varied learning. I've always been on a ceaseless journey to learn, a great deal of which many people have judged as useless. I've disregarded these judgement and believe I will continue to do so, as this so called "useless" information has countless times proven related, valuable in some way, or the journey to discover/use it in life has provided numerous worthwhile experiences. I know that it really comes down to the journey of learning is always worthwhile, even if the end result may be worth less than expected.
I can find no further words that would further my meaning.
love ya

Friends and Things

I feel lucky all the time for the friends I have in my life. Both the ones who I see everyday, and the ones I left back in Washington, where I was born and raised. I've a number of experiences recently that feel very interconnected. I've noticed that people naturally find me inspiring in a specific way. I don't say this to be prideful or arrogant, just a simple statement of truth that I've noticed. I don't take pride in it, because I've never done anything to consciously cultivate it. What I'm talking about is the fact that people open up to me. They seem to find themselves telling me things they never tell anyone else, or things they aren't even sure why they brought up at all. While not consciously cultivated, I'm still very grateful for this. The reasons for gratitude would include the fact that it's almost always a cathartic(Means relieving for those who cant' stand my wordiness.) experience for the one sharing, and although rarely insires me to catharsis, I do always take pleasure in being that outlet for others. I believe that just expressing something can be cathartic, and even without expecting anything to change, even to someone who isn't invested in the situation, who isn't expected to do anything, or even give meaningful feedback. This kind of opening up has been happening around me since I was a child, I just got quite a few reminders in a very short period.

I recently had a number of reminders of how awesome I am. and by that, I mean how much people value me. The first you can all witness by the simple comment left on my last blog by my good friend Barry. Just a simple I enjoy your writing and please keep it up. I decided to write him a quick thank you email and by the end of it I was in tears with gratitude for his taking the time, just the seconds it took, to let me know he found value in the things that I think and love and wish to share with people. The other was a friend of mine who's been in a bad spot recently. I met her through work and another friend and have only known her for a few weeks, but I'm sure she's one of the most awesome people ever. She opened up to me about how bad of a spot she's in and sparing the details for privacy's sake, I, along with the friend I met her through that I also live with/share a room with, convinced her to take some action. She asked us why we were so concerned about her and we both had the same answer. That she is one of the coolest people we've ever met. She started crying, then I started crying cause that's how I am, and it turned into a big hugfest. She took a leap and moved into the extra room in our house and it's gonna be awesome.

I wanna take this opportunity to heart a website I have come to love a lot that has one shirt that I want to share in particular, that I still need to purchase. http://www.threadless.com/ I would add a picture to show you my favorite shirt, but the interweb is being retarded. The shirt says "A hug is my favorite adhesive" other Gems I've gotten from there are "Drop it like you're clumsy" and "I supplement my personality with witty shirts" and a shirt that I can only sum up as hypota-moose, as the explain the graphic on the shirt would take far far too long and you would lose the funny involved, so suffice it to say it's amusing, and if you care enough, you'll look it up on the website.
Adieu and good day for now

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Title to come...

I want to heart an amazing hero of mine, Chris "Ender" Carrabas, the Lead Singer/Guitarist/songwriter of Dashboard Confessional.
Photobucket
I love his guitaring, singing and writing style, the passion he puts into his performance (Live or otherwise) and all around music talent. If I could listen to the music of only one artist/band I could choose Dashboard and never regret it.

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