I have all kinds of things going for me right now, especially when I compare my life as it is now to how things were going for me several months ago. I am no longer in a relationship that I want to get out of. I no longer feel starved for a social life. School is done, I’m having fun hanging out with friends now, and In two weeks I’ll be leaving cincinnati for the summer, to go to North Carolina for a week and then on to California for the summer.
Archive for May, 2006
An Explanation of the Previous Post
Thursday, May 11th, 2006:)
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006You do not need a reason to be happy. I, however, happen to have many today 
:-/
Monday, May 8th, 2006I played some Call of Duty yesterday. I haven’t played that game in at least 8 months, most likely longer. The game was Headquarters on Neuville. I was in second place behind some guy named ‘nosound’ with a ridiculous kill ratio. Even though I was doing very well, it just wasn’t any fun.
I remember the game being exciting. For some reason it did absolutley nothing for me yesterday. I figured I’d be a little rusty but I got into the swing of things right away. I used the Browning Automatic Rifle like I’d been doing so since birth. After about two minutes, I remembered how to use cover and protecting myself from snipers. I remembered how to trick people into running out of buildings into my line of fire. In short, I had all the skills I needed to be better than the people I was playing with. And that made it boring, I think.
This reinforces my view that video games are only fun when there’s still something to learn. Once you’ve mastered the game it’s no longer entertaining.
My Curious Sense of Morality
Sunday, May 7th, 2006Last night I watched the movie ‘Lord of War.’ It’s got Nicholas Cage in it, whom I do so adore. I enjoyed the movie untill the end when it got overly political.
Spoiler Follows
Basically, Cage is a gun-runner. He sells guns to people in all these developing countries and makes a ton of money doing so. The movie ends when Cage’s character (Orvo or something? I’m bad with names) gets caught. His brother is killed (which I predicted after their first scene together, by the way), and his wife and son abandon him. When he gets caught, he tells the dude who has been pursuing him the whole time that he’s going to get away with it because the US Government needs him to sell guns to people they don’t want to get caugh selling guns to. I didn’t really care about the political message at the end of the movie, but I did take away from it two ideas to ponder.
The first idea is this: At the begining of the movie, Cage’s brother’s character has this sign up on the wall at his parent’s restaurant that says ‘Beware of the Dog.’ “You don’t have a dog; is that just to scare people?”Cage asks, to which his brother replies, “It’s to remind me to beware of the dog in myself. The dog that wants to fuck everything that moves; to fight and kill weaker dogs. To remind me to be a bit more human, I guess.” I dig that. Maybe I’ll get a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign for my room.
The second idea is this: Cage’s character made a bunch of money selling guns to poor people so that they could continue to kill each other. He also got his brother killed and destroyed his family. I would argue that the worse of the two crimes is the second; the damage he did to his family is far worse (in my book) than the damage he did to the all the people who killed each other with his guns.
Why do I feel this way? After having read a variety of different stories and historical accounts of famous figures, I came to the conclusion that there were too many people in the world who were ‘good’ to strangers and people they didn’t really know, while being terrible to the people in their lives. Suppose a man struggles to negotiate a peace settlement between two warring tribes, but he also cheats on his wife. In my book, the man is a failure. I don’t care what you do for a bunch of people halfway across the globe; I care about what you do for the people in your life.
It’s for this reason that (especially when I’m drunk around math/physics types) I bad-mouth Albert Einstein. The whole physics community seems to have this obsession with the man, and it bothers me. Was he intelligent ? Sure. Was he creative in his thought process ? Willling to challenge the academic estbalishment? You bet. Concerned about the future of peace in the world? Of course. Was he a good man? Absolutley not; he cheated on his wife, and when she got jealous, remarked that “such jealousy is typical of ugly women.”
The movie just reminded me of that line of thought of mine.
Motorcycles are really Fun
Sunday, May 7th, 2006Yesterday, among other things, I rode Jacob’s motorcycle for a bit. It wasn’t easy to pick up and learn how to drive the thing, but under his guidance I think I did pretty well. I can drive it up and down a straight patch of road at around 25-30 mph. It is unbelievably awesome to do so.
I must buy one.
!@#$ Girls
Thursday, May 4th, 2006Seriously. I feel like I can easily attract girls I’m not trying to attract, and I’m horrible at snaring the attention and maintaining the interest of the ones I do want.
Maybe I’ll just become gay or something.
Goodbye
Monday, May 1st, 2006I wanted to write a song called ‘goodbye’ to express my feelings about graduation. A lot of my friends are graduating from Xavier in the next week. It is likely that I will not see some of these people again for a long time, if ever. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the song to sound just right and I was frusrated with the quality of my recording equipment, so I will just say it here.
Goodbye, Jacob. You’re probably my closest friend at Xavier. When I first saw you and Kyle, I figured you both for idiots and couldn’t figure out why you were in my math and physics courses. Once I realized you were in CS as well, I realized I’d made a mistake. I enjoyed having lunch with you at after DiffEQ in spring 2004, talking philosophy and just hanging out. In some senses we are very different, but I think we have similar minds in a lot of respects. You’ve been a good friend to me, especially when I needed one and I appreciate that. It seems very likely that we’ll keep in contact, but if we don’t for whatever reason, thanks.
Goodbye, Kyle. I have fond memories of you coming over to eat my mom’s chicken and work on the compiler with me. I remember setting in your car outside the root beer stand, waiting for my friends to show up. You have always enjoyed giving me a hard time, which I appreciate. Thanks for continually trying to get me to be involved with the College Republicans; I think if I was then the way I am now, I would have taken you up on it. Good luck at 5/3. I’m sure you’ll go far.
Goodbye, Dan. We talked politics a couple of times in the physics lounge, and you gave me some good advice freshman year. I don’t remember what it was about or anything, but I remember it being good. When I broke up with Megan and needed friends to hang out with, you were there for me. That night me, You, Rich, and Jessica spent playing euchre and drinking was exactly what I needed. Thanks for checking to see if I had anything to do most weekends. I hope you enjoy Purdue.
Goodbye, Sharon. You are a good friend and (as I’ve already said), I consider you to be quite wise. I can’t put a finger on why that is, but I value your advice. I hope Rice works out well for you.
Ryan, I’m not going to bother saying goodbye because we’ll be living together next year. Thanks, though, for being a friend when I needed one.
Clayton, we didn’t hang out a lot and I regret that. I had fun with you in high school and regret to think we could have had a lot more fun in college had I not been living my life just totally wrong the first 2.5 years of college. If you go to the stanford area with Dave, I’ll definately consider following you guys there.
Goodbye fellas, I’ll miss you.