Thursday, August 25, 2005

The Beautiful Washington Coast

Troy, Jeremy, and I went to the coast this last weekend and had some fun taking pictures using a high shutter speed to capture us in mid air jumping off a little sand dune on the beach. Here as some of the pictures click on them to get the larger size photos from flickr.com.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Old Journal Entries After September 11th

Some of these are depressing, ignorant, or completely usless to most people but I was just going through some of the files on my old computer and found a lot of old journal entries that I found interesting and seeing as this is my blog I thought I would post some of the less boring ones.

9/13/01:
Sorrow and fear fills me because of the recent New York terrorist attack on the 11th. Around 5000 people are presumed dead, all of them innocent people. I have no connection to anyone in New York and this makes it a little less traumatic. I can not believe that there are so many people saying shit like, " bomb them all." I mean come on people what would that solve? It might get rid of Osama Bin Laden but not the source of our problems, which is the hatred of America for oppressing Muslim people. However, I believe that the majority of Muslims that hate America are raised to think that we are doing far worse to their way of life than we really are. The US has killed many people also for the sole reason of keeping “unruly regimes” from coming to power, just look at our history with South and Central America. Of course the Taliban is different, they have attacked us multiple times and have declared Jihad against us, so I can understand the need to break up these terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. These governments form purely from ancient religious beliefs, especially concerning the occupation of the West Bank in Israel. The Muslims believe they should have the land and the Jews believe otherwise. I believe that it is all worthless land, historically interesting but no more than a museum. This war over the West Bank has been long and hard fought, and what will be the outcome of one side winning? Nothing but a lot of dead people. This brings me back to the point of why some Muslims hate America so much, they think we support another religion (the Jews), and they think we support them against the Muslims, but really we support them for completely non-religious reasons. Our reason for support is to protect and spread the influence of capitalism and democracy to the rest of the world. This, in my opinion, is a very noble cause as long as we don't kill many people to force this ideal on others. However, supporting democracy by supporting Isreal with weapon power will also not succeed for the sole reason that religion controls the governments of many other countries and that needs to be taken into account when developing a foreign policy. Religion, as much as I despise it, can be a good thing for people as long as they use it as a way of understanding themselves and their life. Also, it can be good as long as it is not used as a way of segregating people, which is what has happened constantly throughout history. The United Nations will most likely attack the Taliban and in response they will attack us again through terrorism. Many people are going to die, and unfortunately this can not be avoided now unless the US decides to change its foreign policy.
On a lighter note, I believe that _______ is getting closer to me. I have been infatuated with her for a very long time and I would really like to be intimate with her. I say she is getting closer to me because of the feelings, or vibes, I was getting from her at the bar a few nights ago. She always seemed to be close to me and even asked for a hug at the end of the night. Ahhh yeah, she has some pretty incredible breasts that got rubbed up against me that night. Oh the things that turn us guys on that girls don't even think about, or at least don't lead us to believe they think about.


9/19/01:
To let wind blow through my hair, while standing on top a hill full of the history of England. Or to watch the waves break on the beaches of Maui, as the sun goes down. This is all I ask for in life. I do not ask for riches or power, all I ask is peace and enjoyment. The world seems as if it is against these goals of mine. No matter how hard I try I will not have the simplicity of life that I want unless I undergo the hardships of an extremely complex life first. This is not how humans should live. We are here, as Aristotle puts it, "to meditate and contemplate." Not to gain power, but understanding; not to fight, but appreciate; not to hate, but to love. I hope one day I attain these most simple of goals, and until then I will meditate and contemplate the means by which I will gain them.

9/23/01:
It seems as if a lot is going through my head, but, really, the same thoughts keep passing through. I need to stop drinking so much alcohol. A glass of wine here and there is okay but drinking so much that I forget the night and can't control my behavior is not acceptable. I fear that tonight I had a break down. It wasn't a real one though, it was completely fabricated by me for some unknown reason. Maybe to make others appreciate me more, but I think that the real reason is that I wanted to feel some sort of love. A false love is better than no love at all. To be alone without any prospect of a good future is more than anyone can handle. Some might say that I have a good life, my parents are wealthy, I don't work that hard, and I have a nice house but let me list the things I feel as if I don't have: a future, love, good friends, peace. These are all things that most humans should have, sort of as a guarantee for being born. I feel as if I have nothing. I had a girlfriend but I didn't love her, and for that I should go to hell if there is such a place. I did love her sometimes. After making love, I would look at her and fully appreciate everything about her, or even when she would come home, depressed, and I was able to make her laugh. But it was not unconditional love, I did not feel as if I could spend my life with her, or even more than the year. I did do things for her, I did them in order to make her want me more, a sort of trap to make sure I wouldn't be the one with a broken heart in the end. Despicable. She attempted suicide, her only way out. My trap had worked far better than I could have ever imagined or wanted. The only redemption I can get is that she is still alive. Tonight I will sleep a restless sleep for the knowledge that my life is far less than significant.

2/3/02:
And the end seemed near. No. I could never end it like this; depressed beyond mortal comprehension, blurry eyes from despair, and my stomach felt as if I hadn't eaten in three weeks. It was bleak, no doubt, but I would not kill myself. Most people would have died by now, but not me, I felt stronger than most, yet weak at the same time. My mental durability was strong enough that it would last forever, even through the hardest times anyone could possibly imagine. Sure there have been people to endure more than me but it is a person to person problem. I feel as if the world has taken a shit on me and left me here to clean up its mess. A mess that I have no control over, yet it is all my fault. The turmoil inside is much worse than a roller coaster, and yet so much quieter and unknown. I fear that I have entered the abyss, point of no return, I can no longer appreciate life, nor death. I am nothing, a complete waste of space and time, though I do see an end, the tunnel of light so-to-speak. That light comes with love, and love is long forgotten by me but not completely. I need companionship, not necessarily a woman, though that would be nice, but friends that I feel I can trust completely, that I get to see all the time and that enjoy seeing me as much as possible.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Religion

Well, it’s time. Time for the world to admit that they were wrong about religion. How far are we really going to takes this? I mean we still have fanatical groups claiming that Jesus will be reborn in the year 2016! When they are wrong then we will have similar groups that say 2027; it will never end until we start to treat these types of people the same way that we treat insane humans that get locked up in a treatment facility because they believe something absurd such as Elvis is still alive and has been telling them to do incredulous activities. This is all just ridiculous. Belief should be based off of what can be predicted, i.e. we believe in the theory of gravity because when we drop a ball it will fall to the ground at a speed that can be predicted. This is still a belief, it is not fact: someday a ball may fall faster than it does today, in fact it is likely based off of the new physics that are being calculated everyday. But! And this is a big BUT! We are still going to be able to predict how the object will fall, regardless of the gravitational variable that changes extremely slowly over time.

Okay so what about the unknowns? What happens after death? Well, let’s watch the fourth grade tape again that we've all seen of what happens to a fox in a field as it decomposes. It decays. Bacteria and all sorts of parasites consume the body and soon there is hardly anything left but bones. This is because once the heart stops beating blood no longer flows and antibodies and immune cells are no longer able to reach the parasites, nor is oxygen able to get to the cells and they quickly become destroyed. Is this proof that there is no God? No. There will never be proof that there is no God and there will never be proof that there is a God, I am simply pointing out what happens with death. Notice I didn't mention that we see a soul float up out of the body and walk up a fleet of stairs to some pearly gates where that soul then gets judged by a saint for all its wrong doings. Nope didn't see that in the video did we? That is because it does not happen. Similarly, there will never be a proof that a rock will fall at a constant speed forever, there will only be a theory that it will fall at some predictable speed. The difference between theories of gravity and the idea of God is that the first helps us make predictions of the future, the latter does nothing to help us at all with anything other than to make some, extremely paranoid, people feel better about the idea of death. Death will happen to us all and should not be feared nor should it be revered, it is simply the end of life.

So the moral of this post: lock up the loonies because we have to do something about this epidemic that doesn’t seem to want to go away. Although there is a new cult spreading that involves an intelligent creator of the heavens that is a Flying Spaghetti Monster that seems to be pretty interesting... maybe there is something to religion after all.