Father Time ain’t got nothing on me

Oh hello there faithful readers, it has been too long, and it is all my fault. Simply enough, I’ve been lazy. (Or have been completely without thought for the past two weeks).Either way,  I am sorry.

But anyways, that being said, let’s get back to business and forget about the shortcomings that have come to pass. Today…it is my 22nd birthday, so that’s kind of cool, but also a little odd. The way I started looking at birthdays once I turned 18  (which was about when I realized that I will one day turn 22), is that after 21, you don’t really have anymore birthday’s too look foreward too. Post 21, I always thought that you are simply getting old. But last night, at midnight, on the minute I turned 22, my room mate and I were bumping Euro-Techno Dance music while wearing wife beaters and short shorts, dancing, eating chocolate, putting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the blender, banging on our wall, and getting it banged on back by the neighbors that share it with us. We then went over to the neighbors to bring them some butter, we had a bunch of extra a figured that they may be out. We then talked for a little while, accused passerby’s that they were checking out our legs, and did some hamstring stretches (Don’t want to get a dance related injury). When we got back to our apartment, we doorbell ditched our other neighbors, and then sent an e-mail to our RA that somebody was being really loud and obnoxious while we were trying to sleep.

Anyways, my perception of 22 has always been as an as the gateway to old manhood, but now that I’m here, it doesn’t really feel any different than I did at 21 (or 7 if you look at my actions of last night). But my point is much like the Death Cab for Cutie lyric “So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different.” I’m old, and I don’t feel any different.

Disney Peppers

Yesterday I went to Disneyland. I went there once as a kid and absolutely loved it. I don’t remember much about the trip outside of learning the language of the natives on the Indiana Jones ride, and my little sisters obsession with Mary Poppins (I thought it was the stupidest thing ever and I let her know it, she was like 4, I was a bad older brother). (I also just had to use spell check to spell stupidest, I feel stupid) Now that I’m older and live LA, I go there all the time, and I still love it just as much (albeit in a different sense) just as much as I did when I was little. This love for Disneyland that I’ve had since I was little got me thinking about how there are things that I loved as a kid that I still love today, and there are other things I couldn’t care less about. For me, there are three categories in this department. The first is things that  loved as a kid, and I still love them, like Disneyland, Spiderman, and Zelda. The second category is things that I loved as a kid, that I appreciate the fact that I loved them and hold some sentimental value, but I don’t have a current desire to enjoy them, such as Peter Pan and Power Rangers. The final is composed of things that I loved as a kid, and I could really care less about now that I’m an adult (or something like an adult) such as The Lion King Soundtrack and the Salinas Peppers (which were a summer league baseball team for local college athletes).

This got me thinking about what makes something have lasting power through the process of aging. And what makes one have a sentimental value for something, and what doesn’t hold value. Is it the weirdness of the human brain or is it the way the subject itself was constructed. I think it’s a bit of both. Disney does great because they make things that are appealing to both children and adults, therefore, adults can still find them appealing even though they are designed for kids. Things like the Power Rangers and the Ninja Turtles have the ability to hold sentimental value because they appeal so well to kids, and such a passion is built up, that they will always hold a place in hearts of those who loved them when they were young. Finally, the things that lose value, and don’t gain it sentimentally, do so because they just do ok on both ends. Kids never have a deep passion for them  (I used to play Power Rangers at Peppers games for instance), so you never truly love them, and adults have so many cool things to enjoy, that ok just doesn’t cut it. I have no idea if this theory holds any real scientific water, but it is a thought.

Objectivity vs. Subjectivity…Duel!

I’ve been playing video games since I was a little kid, and go ahead and call me a degenerate of the new generation, but whatever. I had kind of hit a wall in the past few months, because of a lack of games worth anything. But things were about to change… About a month ago, me and a few friends played through a game called “Eternal Sonata”, and it was quite the game. The game took place in the dying, feverish dream of Frederic Chopin, a polish composer in the early to mid 1800’s. His dream takes the players through this insane fantasy reality, and an amazing story involving characters that you can’t help but grow close too because of how well they personify different pieces of human nature. It’s a game that transcends video games as we commonly know them, and borders on the line of an artistic master piece. But anyways, this isn’t a video game ad (but you should all seriously play it, available on the XBOX 360 and the PS3, that’s the last pith for it, I promise). But the reason I am bringing this game up is because to Chopin, the dream seems so real that he begins to question what reality even is. The question is that if a dream seems more real than reality, then is the dream reality in itself, even if you knew it was merely a dream. What this is really asking in my opinion is whether reality is subjective or objective. All of you scientist and logical thinking folk will say “oh that’s easy, of course reality is objective, you’re silly for even thinking about this.” But I argue that while objective reality is obviously more “real” in an objective sense, how does objective reality even matter in the sense that none of us perceive it the same way. We are all affected by our senses (or lack there of), our emotions, and our sleepiness level (…). And while the world exists in an objective sense, we are all merely subjects in it. So while objective reality may be more “real” (whatever real even is), what does it matter since were not some weird objective space robots that don’t interact with anything and just look at stuff. We all experience life differently, and therefore, none of us look at it the smae way, and none of us are going to react to the same situations in the same way Because of the fact that we feel, sense, dream, and make the world what we will of it, let’s all keep objectivity in mind, but accept and embrace the fact that we are subjects in objectivity, and must therefore live as subjects.

Countdown!

Happy Groundhog Day everybody! Today is a special day for all of us here in the Northern Hemisphere, and guess where my head is…that’s right. Numbers. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Groundhog Day is a wonderful symbol of what a good amount of American holiday’s have become, and that is it being a holiday just for the sake of being a holiday, and not having a meaning that many people ground (punn not intended, I really didn’t notice it until I read back through to edit), any bit of their pride or belief in. Groundhog day doesn’t have any real contemporary meaning. It’s about a big squirl thing, that comes out of a snowy hole, and tries to see his shadow to tell if spring is coming. Call me crazy, but that seems a bit odd. Or look at St. Patrick’s day, which is just around the corner. Outside of a few Irish Americans (and that’s just a few, not very many of them), St. Patty’s is a meaningless holiday (unless you classify pinching people that aren’t wearing green, drinking Guiness, and singing Danny Boy, which is actually a depressing funeral song, as having meaning).  Or Christmas, which for outside of Christians is just a day for giving and receiving gifts. Pretty much all of the days that we celebrate are for all intensive purposes are…pointless (outside of Thanksgiving, 4th of July, and April Fools of course).

I’m not saying that I dislike the the concept of meaningless holidays, in fact I love them for what they are. They are a great little pick me up that help one focus one something outside the humdrumness of every day life (Unless your an astronaut, in which case your life is not humdrum at all).  But life can get so boring from time to time (unless your that astronaut), and getting a little something fun to focus on is one of the best releases that could hope to be offered.

Which brings us back around to why I’m thinking about numbers.  Today begins the count down, the countdown an event that happens very rare, in fact, once (or maybe perhaps a few more), a decade at the most, and only happens for one century, plus 12 years of change, every millennium. By now your probably getting curious, so I will not delay any longer. Today is the 10 year countdown mark for palindrome day 2020. In exactly 10 years the sate will be 02/02/2020, or 02022020 (wild, I know). So in an ode to meaningless holidays, get ready for the most meaningless, yet most unique of them all.

Well, I guess in real life the Empire should have won…

Today I was thinking about happy endings (not the kind you might get at the Vietnamese massage parlor), but the fairy tale kind. See, I like Star Wars, a lot. Call me a nerd, but the Star Wars Saga is among my favorite movies (or series of movies, not really too sure how to be proper there) of all time. But like most of Hollywood, or stories that we love in general, it is for the most part pretty unrealistic. Think about it… There is a Galactic Empire, that has a device with the ability to destroy planets, endless funds at their disposal, and their only form of opposition is a tiny, little rebellion. With the help of a rag tag group of characters including a smuggler, a wookie, a few good pilots, the one cool black guy in all of space (Lando), and one Jedi who never even finished his training, this little tiny rebellion overthrew an Empire that was right in their back yard, and they had no other military problems to deal with. It’s not like the American Revolution, which as remarkable as it was, took place on our home field, with the help of the French (who were pretty tough back then) against an enemy who while they were the most powerful empire in the world was busy with countless other problems, they lived across the pond, and couldn’t focus their entire attention on us rowdy Yanks. No, the Empire had no other things to worry about (except oppressing the galaxy), and the rebellion still was able to not just gain their independence, but overthrow them completely. I mean seriously, in “A New Hope”, why the heck didn’t the Death Star blow up Yavin (the planet that had the moon orbiting it that the rebel base was on), and end the rebellion right there instead of circling around the entire planet to blow up to moon. (Vader, you really dropped the ball there). Don’t get me wrong, I was rooting for the Rebel Alliance, but they got really lucky.

The movie industry has instilled into our heads that the good guys always win, that the guy always gets the girl (outside of a few movies from the past year), and that deep down, that drugee rock star is really a good guy. This my friends, is preposterous. Life for the most part doesn’t have many happy endings. A lot of times, the bad guy does win (especially if he has an entire empire at his disposal), the guy doesn’t get the girl, and the Rock Star is just a douche bag. There should be more stories out there like 1984 (spoiler alert, but if you haven’t read it yet, I don’t really care about blowing it, it’s been out for a really long time and you’ve had your chance). 1984 has one of the most defeating, and depressing endings of all time, where the people that were resisting the oppressing party that had come to power, were kidnapped, betrayed, and tortured till they learned to love that same oppressing party that they were so passionately against. Now that my friends is a good ending because it more accurately reflects the world that we live in. Or in “(500) Days of Summer”, (Yeah, I’m a guy, I saw it, and I liked it) when the guy doesn’t get the girl, another much more realistic ending to the story. So the moral of the story is…life is a lot of time going to be pretty crappy. Deal with it, and not in an angry or depressing sense of “deal with it”, but in a feel good, just got to learn to accept that’s the way life is way. But enjoy the wins that do come your way, because they really are something special.