I Wonder Why I Love You Like I Do

Class, today we're going to be talking about human attraction.  Who knows what human attraction is?

Ah, yes! Melvin?

"When a boy likes a girl even though she has cooties!"

Very good Melvin, that is correct!  Who else knows other words for it?

Go ahead Lucille.

"Smell my finger!"

(It's in pink because she's a girl)

Lucille, if you were a boy I'd applaud that creativity, but since you're a girl, I'm going to punish you.  Go make me a sandwich.  Does anyone, who is INTELLIGENT...no mayonnaise, Lucille...know another word for human attraction?

What's the word, Kemonte?

"When someone has a crush on someone!"

That is right!  Does anyone in here have any crushes or know anyone who does?

Well don't look so skeptical, little Pedro, I was just trying to get some good advice for the ladies, naw meen?

LUCILLE!  I said to cut it diagonally!

Ah, alright.  Now that I've gotten out my jest, I can approach the topic at hand.  And that is a disorder I have diagnosed myself with (don't tell my mom) known as STD.  Spontaneous Truelove Disorder.  What?  Look, I didn't name it.

I have been doing well lately in handling my STD, but sometimes the mean ol' STD comes flaring up in a flash of passion.  The gist of STD is that you become infatuated with someone who you barely know for any one of many reasons.  Reasons include, but are not limited to: Smiles, grins, smirks, grimaces, ridicule, saying "Hi", saying "Thank you" when I hold the door, averting eyes when I walk past, being single, being in a relationship, existing, being a girl, having a decent hold on the English language, laughing at my jokes, frowning at my jokes, breathing, eating, sleeping, and many, many more.

STD isn't as rare as you think.  The amount of people who have STD is just enormous.  I mean, look at me.  I'm a big walking STD case.

Stifle your laughter, STD is not funny, and you would be so unhappy if you had STD.  It hurts alot!  Inside, it hurts, to have STD.  But I have it, and there is no cure except for WMD, Woman Master Disorder, aka Marriage, which is just trading one ailment for another!

Sometimes I wonder why I was chosen to have STD.  Was it my fault?  Was it my parents' fault?  Did they not teach me how to love the right way?  Regardless, STD sucks.

But really, now that that second jest is out of the way, I wonder sometimes where the heck these thoughts come from.  "Hmm, I had a minor conversation with her.  Wonder if she prefers one huge diamond on a ring, or two slightly smaller ones?"

If I'm meant to find the right girl (don't be shocked, I don't think everyone is meant to have someone, and it's another societal norm that runs the way we live), if it's God's will, then I'll find her and my overzealousness for a cute girl will maybe be what attracts her to me.  Who knows.  It's just weird to be going through life wondering if she is the one, oh maybe she is, and hmm, she looks like she can raise a heck of a child and build a heck of a pie.  On the other hand, she looks sweet and talkative and mild, a good foil for my bitter, rambunctious kamikaze personality.

Mrs. Right, you may be out there.  If so, I miss you.  If not, I'm talking to an imaginary friend.  Awesome.

Hoy Me Voy

Mi espanol esta muy mal, y no se como usar accentos y los letros especiales de la idioma, pues ten cuidado, y sea gracioso, por favor!

Una suena que tengo es de esto: A vender mis cosas, comprar un billeto para un avion a la Republica Dominicana, a regresar a ser con mis amigos, mis hermanos y hermanas de Cristo, y vivir en un orfanato visite en mi viaje de misiones, esto verano pasado.

Con nada, seria capaces a vivir en la verdad.  Mucho de la gente alli tienen nada, pero tienen la felicidad que Americanos no tienen, con coches y barcas y casas grandes.

Penso que es muy interesante que la tiempo en un avion de Indiana a Miami es mas de la tiempo de Miami a La R.D.  Eso diganos como proximo el pais esta a los Estados Unidos.  Pero es proximo solo en millas, por que es un mundo diferente, totalmente.  En los Estados Unidos, tenemos muchos tipos de personas.  Personas males, personas bienes, personas que aparecen a ser bienes pero son malos en actualidad.  Tambien, personas que tienen no personalidades, con ojos y manos cerrados, personas que existen pero que no viven.  En la R.D., o lo aparece a yo de mi tiempo en el pais, hay dos tipos de personas. Personas males, y personas quien me darian todo de nada, por que nada es todo que tienen.  Estoy no seguro que si Dios me quiere a ir, pero si Dios quiere me ir, seria bien!

La misione que tengo para ti: Pensas de que, de todos tu ideas y suenas, cual es tu pasion en tu corazon, y lo sigues.

You May Be Right, I May Be Crazy

Nothing says good family fun like having  your mother tell you she is worried about you, because she thinks you're manic.

 

We were enjoying conversation over George's Gyros, another fine establishment of my home town.  I began to talk a bit about the things I have been posting about recently.  And amid it all, amid my passion that life can be something else, she says 

"I'm worried about you.  When you talk like this.  Like...like you're manic."

It's in pink because she is a girl.

My mom has diagnosed me countless times, and I add this theoretical death sentence to my pile of flash cards that I would use, if I were like the rest of the family, to excuse any behavior I might have on any given day.

Granted, she doesn't have answers to anything I say, just questions that imply I am incorrect.

Just so you know the basics of what we were talking about, I was discussing how I feel like God calls us to do things even when we have very little.  To not wait until we get, get, get, and then to give a little.   But to give, give, give, and maybe get a little, but if not that's not what it's about anyways.  This is of course highly illogical.  Christianity is highly illogical.  I know why scientists can't ever prove Christianity right.  It's because the frame of mind we use, which analyzes cost and benefits, gains and losses, etc., can never understand a faith that says to think with your heart and not your head.  I suppose it would harm their job security if they accepted that one can think with a heart instead of just a brain.

People may be right, and I may be crazy, but I do believe it's lunatics God's looking for.

I'm Gonna Shout It Till They Cut Out My Tongue

I made my way back to Northside Diner, the underworld of my hometown, this morning.

This time I brought a friend to the secrecy of it all, a good friend from high school, Allie.  We met at 8.

"8 o' clock?! That early?  Do you have plans for the rest of the day?"

 It's in pink because she is a girl.  And I said to her, "No, but I like getting up early for breakfast or it doesn't feel like breakfast!"

That was in normal color because I'm a boy.

So it was agreed, and I flopped like a landed fish out of bed ten minutes till 8 AM.  Hit the restroom, pet the dogs and use an annoying voice to greet them this morning, and then put on my shoes and fly out the door.  I make it to Northside Diner at 8 sharp, and she isn't there yet.  Girls...can't live with em, can't cook and clean without em.

Well she was only 1 minute late so it isn't a huge deal.  She found me in the back corner, one booth past the one I sat in for the experience that prompted my previous post about the underworld.  She heads over as I am receiving coffee from the waitress.  We take about ten minutes to order because we're too busy trying to catch up at first glance that we haven't even looked at the menu.  Or I haven't anyway.  The first time the waitress comes back for our order, I haven't even touched a menu.

If you're a true fan of me, you'll know that I ordered 'Two in the Nest' at my last visit to Northside.  I order it again, and Allie gets "Short Chicks', which is eggs, toast, and a short stack of pancakes.  If you're wondering if the blog post gets any better than talking about what was ordered, the answer is no.  Nothing cool happens, so you could just go now.  Go read a dictionary, or go cut your nails, or go pee your name on a wall.  All are exponentially more intense than the remainder of this post.

If you're still here, I applaud your lack of desire to be entertained.

Anyhow, we got to chatting about all sorts of stuff over the course of nearly three hours.  And I think the thought that has stuck with me the most is that of how I define age.  I believe it is erroneous to measure someone's age in years, but rather their inability to hope or dream anymore.  I know people my age, in years, who are old men already.

Allow me to explain.  Running in the same vein of my past posts, I will dip into hippie terms like "The System", "The Man", and "Spontaneous Cerebral Re-Unification".  That last one isn't really a hippie term, just kind of a made up word I use to describe hippies and that whole "Enlightenment via Drugs" thing.  Anyhow, on to the complaints about "The Man"!

"The System" is hard to beat, and easy to join.  By "The System", I mean society in general and the views it has of the world.  Main parameters of thought that "The System" operates within include, but are not limited to: "Things can not be changed", "Money will give you what you want", "If you can't succeed alone, you won't succeed at all", and etc.  The one that I mainly want to focus on is "Things can not be changed."  I think this is the biggest of them all because once you accept that nothing can be changed, you can accept every other societal norm of America.

Using the societal norm that I learned in public school, about how I should arrange my thoughts, I have surmised my thesis.  Ahem.

"Age is not a count of how many years one has.  Age is one of two things, either young or old, and whether you are one or the other is decided by the presence or absence of hope."

When you give up because fighting "The System" is harder than joining it, you have aged.  You are old.  And as soon as you join it, you begin saying things like "Politics will never change.  They're all about money and it's no use anymore", or "The environment has been screwed for centuries", or "Every man/woman is the same", or "Money can get someone out of anything".

Now, some of those points may not be totally untrue.  But as an individual recites them with dreary eyes and shaking head, the meaning behind the words shouts "...And it can't ever be changed!"

It's the most disheartening to see my uncles and aunts talk about how "The System" is the only way, yadda yadda, but they spent their entire youths fighting it.  When did they lose, or should I say, when did they choose to lose?

Carl and Ellie, still dreaming and hoping.

Carl devoid of hope.

I may become just like them.  I may fall in line with the rest of the drones, plug into the mainframe of "The System" and offer my small contribution to the hive mind setup.  Granted, some small acceptances of "The System" are acceptable to me.  If a situation arises where one needs money to support others, resigning one's dreams for a certain job to take that which is presented is a good choice.  But signing yourself away because humming along with the masses is easy, and maintaining your own melody is just too hard to focus on with all the dissonance, that is what it means to become old.

Like I said, I may become and old man in a year or two.  I would like to think that this isn't the case, but I'm not naieve enough to think that I am beyond surrender to "The System".  Countless flower children and activists of the sixties and seventies resigned to the norm, and they stand out as one of the most crusading generations of American history.  I may too fall into an exhausted acceptance of the system.

But I'm young now, my tongue is sharp, and my senses keen.  As a young'un, I'm going to stand as one who says that things can be changed.  They shush me frequently, but I shout louder.  And if I wasn't shouting louder in response to every person that raised a pointer finger across their pursed lips with an intense glare, it would be a big step towards becoming an old man.

I Ain't No Fool, And I Don't Take What I Don't Want

Is there any limit to what we won't eat on Thanksgiving?

That question is half-serious, because I am curious to find out if there is any limit. 

Thanksgiving is becoming gay.  Not in like "I like other holidays" sort of gay, but in the "I am stupid" sort of gay.  It has lost it's appeal.  Food?  We have a holiday about food?  It's good but come on, everything else has a purpose.  Christmas, whether or not PC America admits it, is about Jesus being born.  Easter, whether or not PC America admits it, is about Jesus being dead and resurrected.  Halloween, whether or not PC America admits it, is about candy and not whorish self-expression.  Sweetest Day, whether or not PC America admits it, is about...what the heck is Sweetest Day about anyhow?  The only good it ever did me was spending a crap ton of money on a date because it was a special day.  It's like an amateur's Valentine's Day, and it sounds like it's a day dedicated to the Swiss.  Sweetest Day is also gay, along with Thanksgiving.

And I'll tell you why it's gay.  Come on children, grab a spot on the floor by the fireplace, and I'll tell you why Thanksgiving is so gay.  What's that Timmy?  What's gay mean?  Ask your daddy.  Anyhow, moving on.

I gathered with my family at my grandparents this year, like every year. And like every year, no one was really thankful.  A cousin griped, one of my uncles, the know-it-all, whined about how everything in life is a dang conspiracy to keep people like him down (which is an attitude only a chronic victim could have), we all prayed the cookie-cutter prayer we always pray.

 

"Bless us O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, the Lord of Liquor and Nicotine. Amen"

That Jesus fits my family well.  And that prayer is such a joke.  In Catholic school, before and after every meal, we raced to finish that prayer like a priest raced to pull up his pants when the altar boy's parents came to pick him up from his office.

If that offends you, that sucks.  Anyhow, the prayer is begun and ended with the ritualistic "In the name of the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit", with a matching sign language game.  Now I know where rappers get the idea to make up dances for their songs, Catholic prayers.  It makes everyone want to listen to the song even if it sucks.  My little cousin sits across the island counter and does it all with a vacant look in his eyes, and doesn't understand any of it, but he does it because the weight of the family's disapproval is more than he can bear.  Bring it on I say, I used to bench near my body weight.

I don't finish all of my food because I am full.  On my way to scrape it, the people around me who call me family but have a history of thinking me to be a lost sheep with dirty fur, ask me things like "You aren't going to finish that?" or "That's all you're eating?", as if to say more concisely, "Aren't you thankful you impetuous little bastard?"  I prepare for the spiel about starving children in Africa.  It never comes, but I offer my rebuttal anyway.  I pose my train of thought: "I find it more a disservice to said starving children to eat things that I don't even want than it is to let it go to waste.  They can't even eat what they do want because it isn't there, and I would have the nerve to eat stuff I don't want but eat anyway just because the alternative is a trash bin and I'm too greedy to see it fall into a bag, out of my control?  I doubt starving children would enjoy seeing me stuff my face with food I was not enthusiastic about because I wasn't hungry anymore."

I am sure this child would love to watch me stuff my face with food I don't want because my belly is so full that it is the size of his torso by now.

I didn't say all of that, but much of it.  They look at me in mild confusion, because to them, thankfulness is the act of consumption.  I'm so thankful, om nom nom.  They should call Thanksgiving "America Day" because the whole thing is so superfluously consumerist and aristocratic.  I think when I have a family I may have to start celebrating it every other year, because maybe that is the reason people come to my grandma's house annually on this date and complain about who was not acting her age at the workplace, or the prick who cut them off in traffic, or the slutty girl who took their boyfriend.  I left early, and the only person who seemed to think I was leaving anything special was my Mom, but she gets like that for every family function period, so I doubt she even really feels like it's about anything real.

     And tonight I went to my grandma's house on my dad's side of the family, and it wasn't nearly as bad, but some elements of what makes Thanksgiving gay existed.  My whiny cousin of immeasurable negativism was griping about how there was no cheesy broccoli rice, even though it was given to my grandma, and all she had to do was heat it up.  She implies with this statement that my grandma is a stupid old person who couldn't follow instructions, and just threw the broccoli out, almost like "Well shucks, it's cold.  Later Mr. Cheesy Broccoli Rice."  My stepsister joined in, but was more silly about it.  I said aloud, "Man, let's focus on everything we don't have for Thanksgiving."  The cousin continued on griping, repeating exactly what she said about how all she had to do...and I repeated exactly what I said.  Let's just focus on everything we don't have for thanksgiving.  She grimaced as if I forgot that she likes to only piss and moan and never to accept that God places some things that are good around us.  Later that night, her whiny mom griped about her whiny daughter and all the problems that exist in her relationship and why she hates whiny cousin's whiny boyfriend.

For crying out loud.  Thanksgiving doesn't get any simpler in it's literal meaning.  Give thanks.  For anything.  I'm thankful for a crap-ton of stuff.  That's the second time I've said crap-ton in one post, I better chill with that one.  But really, a poo-load of stuff.  Friends, the sun, food, family, girls and their inherent beauty (both inner and outer), that God cares that I exist while many do not, that a world exists where if I want to, I can cut and run.  I'm thankful that I can go buy something to eat within ten minutes of feeling hungry, though some places exist where children murder each other with their bare, frail hands for the equivalent of a saltine cracker.  I'm thankful that gravity and the atmosphere work like they do.  I'm thankful that I can type and have hands, can speak and have a mind.  I'm thankful that cars go, dogs bark, kisses taste sweet, and rejection tastes bitter.  Those are all in no arranged order by the way.

Stuff that you look at or think about and feel wonder or amazement, that's what you are thankful for.

So what are you thankful for?  Not just the givens, like friends and family, but real stuff, real stuff that is worth taking some time to think about.  Don't even tell anyone, unless you realize one of your hidden gratitudes is to someone, just keep it in your head and use it to remind you of life being beautiful even when you have to dress it up in pounds of makeup to make it presentable. 

Hello Old Friend

  WARNING! TIME TRAVEL MAY BE HARMFUL TO THE CROTCH!  

If there is anyone out there, anyone listening, anyone reading, do me a favor.

     Pick an old friend you were once close to and re-connect with them.  People talk about time travel as if it doesn't exist.  I've not read a single book by Stephen Hawking or built a single machine worth anything, but I discovered time travel tonight talking to an old friend. 

     What about time travel to the future, you may ask?  Connect with a new friend.  We are all each others' futures.

No One Here...But Me and God

     I have come to an odd state of mind lately.  Talking to a friend from home about college, I nearly subconsciously divulged that I would love to sell my belongings, buy a van and food, and travel America helping people.  Every broken down car, hitchhiker, beggar, what have you.  Before I realized it, I was fired up and excited about what I wasn't even making preparations to do. 

     Hold the phone, you (and society) say.  What about being respectable?  What about college?  If not a prerequisite for a career, it's at least a prerequisite for social acceptance.  The friends I've shared my desire with seem to raise the eyebrows to the ceiling, wondering if it would be rude to laugh at my idea.  The bottom line is that I feel like being where I am is a lame idea.  As my good buddy Brad Kinnison said, "It feels kind of silly to be Christians in a Christian school with other Christians talking about what it means to be a Christian."  What he is getting at is this:  We can talk, or do.  The time we spend here feeling good and faithful could be spent making a difference that goes beyond having a fun time meeting new people in college or working towards a career we may not understand the appeal of.  God doesn't call people to discuss and debate, he just calls them to do.  I feel like, if God could offer his view on the topic verbally to us in conversation, he would say "Well, you can either talk about what should be done...or just do it.  No wasted time, no arguments, just action and change."

     The prophet Jeremiah is approximated by historians to be the age of 19 when he began his minsitry.  I am 19.  Society was probably telling him he needed to work in an apprenticeship or start building a flock and finding a wife.  Society is telling me I need to build credentials and a career and find a wife out of one of the many lovely women at Olivet Nazarene University.  No sarcasm in that last bit, by the way.  God told Jeremiah, "No, no.  Forget all that.  Is your faith about ME, or society?  And I know it sounds crazy and dangerous, but I will protect you."  God is asking me via the world I view around me and how I view it, "Is your faith about ME, or about this, which society and especially the Christian community try to tell you is about me?"  While I've hit that note, I'll expound.  When did it become the Christian thing to do to go to college?  I feel like if I told my parents I want to be a nomadic philanthropist (except without the years of college and expensive artwork in my house), they would think that I was running from God's call to me to be responsible, they would view me as an angel fallen from my potential, an angel who decided to sin because he didn't want to conform.  Like I can't serve Him without a college degree.  Ultimately, do I want to serve myself and society with this life, or Him?

                                    Who should I help?

    People often say they want to serve God, but then take their situation and just modify it a tiny bit to appear as service.  I do believe that we can serve God wherever we are, but too many people use their own plans and those of society as excuses to not go do something radical for God.  "I would love to do that, but, I have math homework."  God gives less that zero craps about math.  It's not a sin to not do homework or feel like college isn't for you.  Society says so, using one hand against their cheek like half of a megaphone, and using the other to try and shove God into the box known as "Societal Norms and Procedures", but I believe it is not.

     A side note, if it weren't for me feeling like I'm chatting with God right now, I wouldn't be blogging.  No one reads my posts anymore.  In the words of a song me and the band I'm in wrote, "No one here, but me and God."

     Anyhow, that's where I'm at right now.  Wanting to be more than society says is acceptable.  The real kicker is that I can't just leave and be God's worker.  I can, but I know I'll flake out.  The urge to fly the coop is not that strong yet.  There's always talk of a revolution long before someone has the guts to incite rebellion.

     It is awfully romantic to think of this as a rebellion.  The important thing to keep in mind is that I am a rebel with a cause.