what do you do when youa re frustrated?

today i was outside and ran into my kindergarten teacher who is probably sixty or seventy now.  she asked about my future plans and i mentioned my intention to volunteer for the kerry campaign and she made the comment "well you picked the right guy".  it made me happy to hear that from someone else around here.  this gives me hope for this fall.  made me feel downright good.

a quick reminder that my blog is for me, and i didn't tell people i knew about it so i would feel the freedom to write what i felt.  if offended don't read it.  i came to the conclusion that if something was silly enough that i wouldn't want others to read about it then it would be silly for me to think about it.  also,  most of my posts are inspired by things happening around me but my thoughts are not limited to only include those i know or the things around me.  i have yet been inspired to write another post by something happening around me.

drugs -- something i have contemplated a lot.  ever since we are little we are told, don't drink, don't do drugs.  then we get older and start wondering about what we are told... many people end up ignoring the wisdom of the ages and doing shit we wouldn't be proud of later in our life.  then again many people ignore the brainwashing and do something they see no problem with and then other people don't think about it and then yet another group of people consider the wisdom of the old and believe it because it is wisdom.  so when faced with this problem i thought long and hard about whether i would do drugs or drink, long before even having the option.  i decided it was a shame that we lived in a society that fought a drug war that cost billions of dollars instead of say.... making sure polio was wiped out... or trying to stop the aids epidemic.... so then i wondered if perhaps the people telling us constantly that drugs were terrible were trustworthy.... some, yes, others, no.  so then what do i think about... well why wouldn't we do drugs.... i like having fun.  i think most people do.  is fun worth having... yes.  so, yes i can justify doing drugs.  but perhaps the negatives outweigh the pluses.  negatives.... o yea... they are severely detrimental to your health.... well some of them.  although, wait a second... so is eating fast food or pizza all the time.... high cholesteral can kill you at the age of 35.... smoking a lot... pretty comparable. so accepting that living a life without eating food you liked was a pretty shitty option i wondered if living a life without using drugs was the same thing?  i can to the conclusion that living kills you, from the day you are born you begin dieing.  life is not about living the longest but living a life that you like.  so then i considered that other negative of drugs and alcohol... it can prevent us from living the life we want.  addiction.  takes control of lives and ruins them.  i've seen the alcoholics in my family.  i don't like that lifestyle.... it always struck me as fake.  getting away from what is really enjoyable in life and what is hard in life.  but then i also saw that my mom enjoyed have a cup of wine when she had fish, yet she didn't drink that much and it didn't ruin her life.  so i came to a conclusion about drugs and alcohol,  everything in moderation.  it seems ridiculous to completely discount a way of having fun, but then again it seems ridiculous to let anything take complete control of your life.   i would never make it so all i did was go home and play video games but then i would also not avoid video games at all costs just because i didn't want to play them all the time.  since making up my decision i've tried drugs and alcohol.  do i regret it... no way.  i look forward to the day when i can have a glass of wine with fish also, not because i crave a high, but because that is living life and i can do that without falling into addiction. disagree agree?

life is strange.... i spose it only makes sense to stick it out to the end, ya never know what's going to happen.  while reading anne frank's diary i often thought about all these aspirations that she had.  to be famous, to be a great writer, etc and wondered if she knew that she was going to get caught and die in the holocaust and nothing more about her future would she have given up.  perhaps kill herself.  because even though all of that happened she still fulfilled a lot of her aspirations after death.  it is so strange how everything can work out.  another thing that i wondered was; as she was being escorted out by the SS do you think she just stopped for a moment, lost all her fear, and noticed that she was in fact outside, where she had wanted to be for so long.  it would not surprise me.   on another subject, i have been podnering why you do not get electrocuted when you touch an electric stove.  i don't believe it is because the filament is within the metal part you actually see glow because i think it gets hot way too fast to actually not have electricity running through it, so perhaps it is grounded very well.  which could lead me to believe if you were perhaps standing in a puddle of water with a wet hand and touched the stove you may perhaps get electrocuted (yes this isn't realistic) but more seriously what if the grounding got messed up, one day you would grab a metal pot off the stove and the next thing you know you are in the hospital.  i wonder if this actually happens.

so i guess i'm off to north carolina. *knocks on wood*

so a self-improvement post:  i don't know whether it is ok for me to be so passionate about the actions and beliefs of others.  i've become a lot more accepting of religious but most of them i can not put on the same level as people i respect as intellectuals.  simply because i can not understand how people can be religious.  although spiritual people are a whole different story.  it's the dogma that gets me.  there are other things though that truly bother me.  it is silly to be bothered by other people though in any ways so that is not what i'm talking about changing, that is obvious.  i'm curious whether it is ok to even consider the actions or opinions of others.  for one, as long as i am considering them i think i will feel some emotion towards what they believe or how they act thus making it impossible for me to not be bothered sometimes at least. two, people will be what they will be and if i am constantly discounting them for things then i will end up very lonely.  although the counter argument is that there are lots of things i don't like that i don't discount people for, only the things that are more important to me.  i would also say it is an integral part of me to expect more out of myself other people and the world, so it is easy easy to be upset with other people when they don't make those cuts.  i guess i shouldn't discount other people so much as just accept i can't be happy with them or befriend/appreciate them if they don't share the qualities i find most important.  so the real question is how you stop letting other things bring you down that you find important.  things you are passionate about.  how do you accept that the world isn't going to accept peace without it really bothering you.  isn't the fact that it bothers me the very reason i'm passionate about it.  but there is no reason for things out of your control to bother you. 

what do you think about australia, where you are fined for not voting?  good? bad?  what if instead of being fined you were rewarded for voting, 100 bucks to everyone that votes?

i have come to the conclusion that it is better to vote uneducatedly than not to vote at all.  i discussed this with my brother yesterday.  it is most disgusting and disheartening and a number of other things to not vote at all.  it is the first step.  i also finished reading anne frank's diary. "the diary of a young girl".  it was very good.  everyone should read it.  it makes me even more sad looking at our society.  i think it is quite possible the "hippie" movement in the sixties could've easily been a cause of seeing parents and family members die.  peace and love is something that should be at the top of all our priorities....  it is incredible how much insight a girl at 14 years of age could have.  shame on my friends that aren't voting.  it seems humanity really never learns the lessons of past generations although anne frank would've probably believed that we do to some extent, we are simply slow learners.  truly amazing book.

in reference to my last post.  it befuddles me how something that seems so obvious to me can cause such a great divide among people.  this leads me to two conclusions, neither of which i can fully accept.  one i have very little grasp of the situation because of how staunchly i hold my views, believing that the greater understanding of the situation i have the greater i would be able to understand the other side of the situation.  although the more and more i learn and the more time passes the stronger my views become. (leading me to believe that perhaps i am not looking at it with an open-mind) or 2: all of those people are ignorant.  when you are faced one against many it is silly to assume the many are ignorant.  although not impossible, silly nonetheless.  so this is why i address open-mindedness.  but first the fact that i address is a hint that i am open-minded (although does not prove it).  so i try to understand where they come from, what is important, etc etc.  every road i go down leads to the same conclusion.  of course this is based on my "fact base".  this leads me to question my "fact base".  is it completely biased, believable since my parents share the same views.  so i address my fact base. what are the facts that these other people hold that i am missing, well i have yet to come to an arguments that is in the slightest convincing.  and i often see common themes among people who disagree. the one comment i hear to no end "i like him" that does not help me evaluate my fact base and my bias.  so i have yet to come across any truth to help me come to a conclusive decision except that when you have enough proof pointing in one direction you should just go with it.  so is now a time when i can forget my bias and keep developing my ideas, or must i keep considering my base?  it is a tricky question because this is how i blame other people's ignorance and misconceptions. something i am trying very hard to avoid.

the idea of open-mindedness intrigues me.  it also escapes my grasp.  people say it is ok to accept other points of view which is very true, depending on how much you know.  i say what is more important than accepting other points of view is realizing how much you really know about any topic.  obviously if someone said pigs can fly you would not accept their point of view, you would be very "close-minded" and tell them they are wrong.  how people go from that to saying you must accept other opinions eludes me.  it is necessary to reject other opinions in order to hold opinions.  obviously you will not be correct about everything you believe and that is when open-mindedness is necessary and the realization of how much you know about something. a fine line indeed.  things is we can not reject close-mindedness, unless we are sure we know more than the person who is being close minded and disagree.  open-mindedness is simply an admittance that we don't know enough to form an accurate opinion.  it should be referred to as that instead of having this stigma of being the ultimate achievement in thought.  "i admit i do not know enough to form an accurate opinion so tell me what you think" that is all.  when we know enough it is ok to say "you are wrong".  and we shouldn't be ashamed of being able to tell people they are wrong.  we should know ourselves and be proud that we do know enough to say "you are wrong".  for i am as sure as sure gets that pigs can not fly, and i will tell someone who thinks otherwise just that.  i have more doubt in my belief that pigs can fly than in my belief that mr bush has been a terrible president and the quote "if you aren't completely disgusted then you haven't been paying enough attention" comes to mind.  it is unfathomable that people can think that he has been anything else to me,  and it is unfathomable that people will dismiss this belief.  i can't understand.  i can understand a lot of disagreements but this is one that has continually stumped me.  it is similar to when i was rejecting religion.  for a long time religion was what occupied my thoughts.  i could not determine how people could be religious.  it stumped me that people would believe in anything out of pure faith.  so i rejected religion.  the dogma i found disgusting and it confounded me that people could not see outside of it.  that they could not be "open-minded".  but as i have gotten older i no longer believe it is about being open minded.  the decision was not made with logic or reason, it was faith.  understanding requires logic and reason therefore faith can not be understood, it is merely felt.  this intrigued me that so many people could just feel something and thus i began to understand spirituality.  this also resulted in my further rejection of religion, further acceptance of being able to feel something in the universe beyond logic and reason.  i don't know what it is but i'm open to a number of explanations.  i'm not sure what the feeling is even.  perhaps looking up at the sky at night or riding in your car on a nice summer's day.  but it is not religion.  so i have excercised my close-mindedness and rejected religion as fully as i have rejected that pigs can fly.  i don't know if this is making sense or even tying all together,  but i think in order to truly be open-minded we have to be close-minded sometimes.   for example,  i think it is ok to be totally intolerant of intolerant people.  racist  are wrong, end of discussion.  i do not have to be open-minded to their opinions and will not be. and things progress from their.  i find it totally disgusting that politicians tried to pass the FMA.  close-mindedness at it's best i believe.  although i can understand that the real discussion is one of definitions the whole thing disgusts me because i don't believe those are their true motives. i could go on and on about it and thus i reach the conclusion that it is bad after considering it for enough time.  thus i have come to my conclusion about mr bush.  i have considered enough to reject him as being even an "ok" president and i have been thorough enough that i can't understand how other people can think otherwise.  so i come back to the dillemna of those same people saying that i need to be more open minded.... but i can't , i can't understand when open-mindedness must be used and close-mindedness must be used if this is not a situtation that i must be open-minded and not close-minded.....where do we draw the line?

there are a lot of problems in the world and everyone can identify them but how often do you hear about really comprehensive solutions.  that would actually solve the problems.  for example the drug problem.  yea the war on drugs is ridiculous but what is the solution?  i would say legalization of most drugs.  but that is really a solution.  a real solution is very specific.  how often do people hear of these real solutions?

Referring to terrorist: "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."  George W. Bush

the death toll in paraguay has been updated to 464 and yes CNN had one story on it. 

318 people dead while shopping. unbelievable. three days of mourning will ensue. mind you, we had a month of mourning when ronald reagan died (ten times as much for 1/300th the amount of people). three mass graves have been found in the ivory coast. of course CNN didn't report that cause the ivory coast is in africa. and israel is expanding a settlement in the west bank. so we have a story of people recently dying another of people who died awhile ago and another of people causing more death in the future. but what is the headline at CNN "Husband Charged With Murdering Missing Wife". wtf  o and an update.  the paraguay fire is not in the top stories.

don't doubt life's ability to provide opportunities

why can't i get a hold of anyone when i need to....

i remember when i was little i watched the movie "the search for bobby fischer" and it inspired me to play chess more.  i went through a time when i played a lot.  who knows when i got older i would discover that bobby fischer was a prejudiced bastard.  it is strange how when we are little we look up to people and they never fail to have qualities that dissappoint and disgust.  then we reach the point when we stop looking up to people.  and realize no one is that great.  everyone has their slimeball side.