The Past Men

Chris
Edmund
Zack
Richard
Tom
Edward
Padriac
David
Dan
Greg
Marbles/Jake
The Hungarian
Randy
Matt

mio amore

I stared at him in the disjointed light, diced by the venetian blinds. I knew he'd always remember this moment. He'd think of how he felt. How my red nails looked against his skin.
His eyes were so telling. All the pain and confusion and hurt. It was so raw. But I wasn't afraid.

I just wanted him to stop hurting.

The Fall

45 minutes ago I got off the phone with my Aunt.
The conversation reaffirmed my philosophy of family: You can pick your nose, your friends, but relatives, like nipples, are just something you're stuck with.

There are those families who are all pretty supportive of each other and have holidays to catch up on each other's lives and share gossip. That's not my family.

My family is wealthy, at least my mother's side. Even if they don't have money, they act as if they do. Business attire, never casual. Always busy. Always professional.

Anyways, next week, Christmas, I'll be with my boyfriend. His grandmother is having dinner at her home. I say "I'm going to go visit an elderly widowed woman who would love to see me on Christmas." Most stable people would react with, "Oh, that's sweet. Hope you have a nice time, sorry you'll be missing our (Insert blank)", or "Have fun, tell her I said hello!". Not "I really am surprised at this decision. I've always been level with you. I can't fathom why you would go that weekend. You're on Winter Break right now, aren't you? After all your parents have done for you, and what they have been through...missing Christmas with them, I can't understand"

I guess I could have lied and called in sick.

Life. Success

Every minutes of everyday I think about the millions of little steps I can take to success. What people do I need to talk to. What risks should I take. Who do I need to call?

Will it all pan out?

Will I achieve my dreams?

Utopia. Rough version

People as a group try to achieve perfection but you cannot suppress human desire.

Texts: Watchmen, The Shakers, More's Utopia, Genesis, Plato's Republic.

‎"Life is like a VCR. If you put chicken in it, it won't work properly."

wise words from my roommate

i learned its a bad plan to write "analysis" as a stop motion movie

no one wants to see anal

Ian's Take

"“I think the problem with society stemmed from when things like cars and televisions and stereos stopped being luxury items and became an expected item in someones life. IE greed became the norm. when you become greedy, you think only of yourself rather than others. I remember when mangos were a luxury fruit, now every corner shop sells em, and people expect everything. It's an inability to realise how lucky you are to have what you have"

If I were to create my own Utopia

A rough start:

-Gender equality

-Both men and women are required to take time off work to rear children. Both parents are given 3 month paid leave from work when a new baby arrives. Men are encouraged through this to develop their nurturing side.

- People are used as testing for new products, not animals

- Prisons are horrible places, not vacations

- Free therapy for the populous

- Schooling is mandatory for 15 years

-Must learn: art, music, theater, sports, reading, writing, mathematics, science. No standardized testing or competitive schooling. All things taught are applicable in the real world; such as balancing checks, filing taxes properly

- After 15 years students can pursue up to 5 more years in academia in whatever subject(s) they choose.

-Banks and corporations are regulated by the elected oligarchy. Oligarchy is elected by people though. (contains 8 people, 4 men, 4 women). Decisions made by them must be unanimous. Each member is responsible for a different aspect of society. (Education, Jobs, Government Expenditures, Healthcare, Foreign Relations, Industry, Housing/ Development, Population)

Suicide.

Mark Rothko

Vincent Van Gogh

Ernest Hemmingway

Sylvia Plath

Isabella Blow

Alexander Mcqueen

Diane Arbus

Soup!

Black bean broth

Regular vegetable broth

cashews, split lentils, black beans

carrots

onions

celery

Garlic and Chive cheese

parsley

salt and pepper

Also for fun

soy sausage

rice

public schooling in a nutshell: blacks were oppressed. white men are suppressive egotistical misogynists who cant control their desires. women are loose and shouldn't be trusted. asians are super intelligent but cant seem to speak english properly if their lie depends on it. AMERICA RULES! go jesus"

Chat Conversation End

New job. New people

This time around; music

Stage manager... and I'm barely an adult.

Nearly 20

I'm turning 20 soon. I've been working my ass off to get to where I am and I'm taking a moment to reflect on what I've learned from life.

Life: Chances are everyone else is just as pissed off and frustrated. It's the recipe for success. No one got to where they are by magic.

Being confident is almost as hard to achieve as happiness. Both are definitely worth the effort.

Survival and actually living are very different things. Take risks and be afraid, it means you're getting somewhere.

Fall in love every so often. Love is the closest thing we have to magic.

Take care of your body! At the end of the day, after work, and class, and whatever else, you are left with you. Own that.

Le Fin

One time in college....

I met a guy on a Friday afternoon. A butcher. He told me he was 30. Saturday I met his family. His brother talked about this guy's daughter. I was confused. Sunday he tells me he's 39. He lied because he was afraid I wouldn't like him. He then said he had a 21 year old daughter. Then he asked me to move in with him.

I booked it outta there.

On humans

I've been doing a lot of reading and discussion in terms of, well, us.

Organized people's productivity versus that of a 'sloppy' person. Are messy people less happy? Are organized people narrow minded? Why do people who live in poor and abusive environments stay there? Why do they not have a desire for something better?

My roommate told me of her best friend's ex girlfriend. The girl grew up in an abusive home so she was sent to live with her grandparents. Her grandfather proceeded to sexually assault her. She got a boyfriend who sold her into prostitution.

Another person she knew was abused at home. Her mom tried to kill her sister, so they were sent to live with their grandmother who eventually kicked them out for their behavioral problems. They spent high school in foster care.

Both of these girls have a baby to care for as well.

Stories like these are fairly common. People are hopeless or afraid of leaving home.

A boy gets a football scholarship and goes to college. He has such a hard time adjusting to the academics and social change he goes back to his home. His home where his brothers molest his sisters and where he has no indoor plumbing or electricity.

And if he were to stay he would have lost his family because the experience would have differed him so much.

These are the people society hides from, while they desperately try to forget themselves in unachievable beauty and lifestyle standards. While they bankrupt themselves on a mortgage they can't afford. While they divorce and remarry, just so they won't be alone.

Fixing Education

Some friends and I took a stab at it. Here's the conversation:

"Here's something I don't understand. There are, to my knowledge, roughly 5000 colleges and universities in the USA. Why not get rid of the less beneficial ones and put money towards the others so I'm not $40,000 in debt by graduation? Or give money to all the people who can't afford college and get financial aid.

· · 3 hours ago near Philadelphia

• 
  
• • 

    What would you do with all the students at said colleges? Would that end up seeming like a push to get rid of small colleges? But then I think that most small colleges have better finaid than bigger colleges. How would this affect acceptance rate/exclusivity?

    3 hours ago ·
  • 

    I think there should be actual research done in terms of the quality of education, the acceptance rate, and the percentage of people hired after graduation.Most of research I've seen appears inconclusive or poorly investigated. From there, colleges that have the lower scores should gradually be phased out. Students and professors would be transferred to better schools. Eventually, over say a 15 year progression, colleges will have increased size and professors and student body. The surplus from closing down the other college would go towards financial aid. The plan isn't foolproof but no plan is.

    38 minutes ago ·
  • 

    The main thing I remember is a college I had never heard of in West Virginia called my home and offered me a scholarship based on my GPA. It sounded suspicious and I found it strange a college just happened to have the resources to do that

    37 minutes ago ·
  • 

    If there were less colleges around, there would be less reason to keep tuition competitive.
    
    And the kind of government review program you're talking about would take cash away from the federal aid programs we already have.

    • 
      

      • ah

      • hrmm

      • i dont want competitive tuition

      • but i get your point

    • 13 minutes ago

      
      

      • it's that competition that was going to get you a scholarship in the first place

    • 13 minutes ago

      
      

      • But my point is competition or no

      • many people who need them aren't getting them

      • let alone a chance to get them

    • I'm sure somebody accepted it

      • not like they're going to let scholarship money sit around

    • 
      

      -Think of the cost of running all those academic insitutions

      • companies like GE are getting away with tax exemption

      • the governor of PA just cut education funding to put it into prisions

      • 60 percent of students in the area around temple dont make it to high school graduation

    • 10 minutes ago

      
      

      • yes, education should have more funding

      • that was not what I was arguing against

    • 10 minutes ago

      
      

      • I know

      • It just seems all those im power put money towards prision instead

    • 9 minutes ago

      
      

      • they do

    • 8 minutes ago

      
      

      • *sigh*

      • so no proposition of your own?

    • 7 minutes ago

      
      

      • about balancing the federal budget?

    • 7 minutes ago

      • erm. i guess thats where i went

      • everything federal relates

    • 6 minutes ago

      it begins with cutting the defense budget

    • • a sliver of that would be enough to fund that university review program

    • 3 minutes ago

      
      

      • alright

    • 3 minutes ago

      
      

      • I don't claim to know enough about how the system works after that

    • 2 minutes ago

      
      

      
      

      
      

      
      

      
      

      I dont either. other than too many people are getting away with too much illegal/undemocratic crap
    • 
      

      • working around special interests groups and the like, cutting wasteful spending, and telling local schools to stop pretending like they're going to cut the bus system

    • 
      

      • Special interest groups we can survive without I think

      • they seem to work more for $ and big business than the common woman whos working 3 jobs to feed her family

    • about a minute ago

      
      

      
      

      
      

      they're broken as they are

      
      

      • take the special interest groups supported by the tea party, for example

      • the play like they're grassroots groups when they're being funded by NewsCorp et al

        and then they talk like they're the common man who seriously thinks that corporations should get a tax break

        that sort of thing could only be solved by government regulation, which defeats the purpose of special interest groups

        so like I said, broken

    right

20:30

so I say

ditch the groups

which is impossible because lobbyists and corruption

here comes an impossible scenario

get rid of lobbying. (hey! look at that. the news is already less bias!) that knocks out interest groups. The middleman is gone and actual citizens get to have a say again

they can call government officials and politicians and have their voice heard

the impossible scenario would need impossible setup

like taking away the value that a lobbyist has to the politicians it funds

so then, where does campaign funding come from if not the lobbyists?

• 
  

  • lobbyists get their money from business, no?

• 12 minutes ago

  
  

  • so then take my setup and replace the word "lobbyist" with "business"

  • because it's the same thing

• 12 minutes ago

  
  

  • okay

• 11 minutes ago

  
  

  • with the same interests and results

• 11 minutes ago

  
  

  • business would then need to do something with the $400,000 salary lobbyists have

• 11 minutes ago

  
  

  • put it back into the economy

  • pay off the taxes im sure they owe

  • let alone campaign funding

• 8 minutes ago

  
  

  • or fund a propaganda campaign on all major stations explaining how the government is full of evil socialists who want nothing more than to beat up those poor multinational corporations

• 8 minutes ago

  • 
    

    that already happens

• 7 minutes ago

  
  

  • because lord knows they won't put the money towards improving the working conditions of third world countries

• 7 minutes ago

  
  

  • we need our indian tech support

• 7 minutes ago

  
  

  • if big business was forced out of the political process, they would try they're best to get back in

  • *their best

• 6 minutes ago

  
  

  • i realize that

  • and no amount of regulation will stop them

  • but trying to eliminate their power hold will do some help to the rest of us

• 5 minutes ago

  
  

  • it would be entertainment

  • seeing the results