Christian Bale - Final Oil Painting

Christian Bale Oil Painting
done a while a ago but i forgot that i didn't upload it yet
well here it is
20in  by 16in
kinda bad photo of an otherwise awesome painting
i'm actually really proud of this 

Good Books

good books.
what is a good book?
i mean i've read plenty but the way i judge a good book, or the way i know it's a good book is when i get this sort of depression or ache in my chest, somewhere near my heart. It's physical. Then i start getting kind of sad no matter what. i'll even get damn depressed when it ends with a good ending; i'll get sad cuz the happiness is over.

the feeling that the book evokes is just too damn much.
sometimes i feel like i wish i never read it just because i feel too damn depressed afterwards.

speaking of depressed, why are depressing stories with angst and shit considered "good"
i've noticed that this happens quite often.
whatever the genre, whether it be comedy or something else, if it makes you cry at the end or at least at some point, you think "damn that was good"

making you cry is good?
getting you all depressed is good?
so basically a "good read" is something that makes you sad or watever

don't get me wrong
i like good books and getting to know about human nature and all that stuff
it's damn enlightening and will open doors that you didn't even know were there for you
yea sad books can get your mind going sometimes
when reading sad books is a rarity, you'll get a real kick out of the stuff you can learn from people dying, good vs evil, the devil and all that kind of stuff

on the other hand it bothers me a little to have to finish a supposed "good read" with sadness
i'll think too much afterwards
and i'll never get anything else done because of that

that's why we need some comedy
all this heavy stuff weighs down too much
i can feel it in my brain and my chest
honestly i feel like my brain just gained an extra pound
not necessarily in smartness or knowledge
just uncomfortably weighing down

no i don't have a medical condition
i'm sure i can be the only one with these sort of post-read mental...hindrances

anyway
that's why i love making people laugh,
i'm actually glad to make people laugh their asses off and all that trite stuff like "laughter is the best medicine" or watever.
Trite Truth though.

there are some people out there who wants to make you think
and then there are those who can make you laugh
but there are also those who can make you do both

i think that's the best way to absorb knowledge; laughing your way through it
enjoying the ride

now that i think about it, if there was a good book  - a supposed good story
and it was the best story in the world, winning all the awards and all that but it was also the best of all time
like it beat out all the great fiction writers of human history
a super book,
but if it made you depressed in the end, made you cry harder than any other book
i mean if that's what it takes to read this book, to absorb the best of the best knowledge from it,
then i wouldn't do it.
i'll just buy myself a chris rock show ticket.

once in a while is alright
but when so called "good books" get to only be depressing sob stories, then it's not worth reading
if that's what the critics like and if that's what people are following then forget it

do what you like
but for me, i like a good laugh every once in a while.
i'll get depressed easily just from not laughing enough

revamping the blog

yea just a little quick post about the new design
it's been a long time so i thought i decided it was time for a change

i thought it would take a short amount of time to find a suitable background
but i forgot that there were so many choices!
so yea after several minutes i settled on this mountain picture.
i'll stick with it and see how i'll feel about it later.

right,
cheers. 

thoughts on advise

just had a thought today
before i do homework and other stuff
and i decided to share it

anyway
so about advise.
i think that generally, listening to other people give you advise doesn't really help you
let me explain a bit

usually when you listen to other people give advise to you, you just sort of zone out or let it leak out the other ear. basically you just forget about it and you move on. course maybe a few dregs might stay in your mind, you know, just to file it away like in the "history" section of your gathered information.

besides just mindlessly forgetting about it, there are other ways of ignoring advise.
like if you can't take criticism, whether it's constructive or not because of pride or watever.
i know that happens to me a lot.

other times i try to remember advise on life that some elderly person gives me but i always manage to forget it.

Sometimes forgetting the advise is on purpose and sometimes it's not. Either way, it's useless just listening to someone tell you what to do or what not to do.

Because you don't really learn from it. Watever the subject matter, however important that advise is, you won't really learn it if you don't have some sort of concrete experiences that gives to a concept of an advise that would otherwise just float around in the air.

people only REALLY get what people mean if they've experienced it.
whenever you say "OH i know what you mean..." you really do know because at some in time you've had an experience that provides the whole works of it like a wikipedia page.

for example, if you, let's say, went swimming once.
you have an entirely and thoroughly researched file on that subject now.
you know what the water feels like
what the pool smells like
what the bubbles in the hot tub felt like
how shallow is the shallow side
how deep is the deep side
the common places where people leave their change
people secretly urinating in the pool
i mean the whole works
and especially if you liked swimming or watever

you learn a shit load more than just reading a book on swimming and seeing "swimming is fun. The water is nice." it's just a concept if you've never practiced and tested it out.
it's kinda scientific in that way with the whole scientific method business

you i think that when it comes to advise, the only way heart and brain goes "DAMN i get it now!" is when you are out and about finding your own advise.

the people who gives advise (in a genuine manner that is) are the people who've experienced it and are trying to pass down their knowledge and shit. Which is all good, cuz they want to prevent others from making that same mistake and stuff. You can follow it, but it's not really learning.

if you came to a fork in the road and you've got two paths, and one guy tells you to take the left one cuz the right one tests your bravery and shit with dragons and other mythic folklorish stuff, it would be natural to disregard or not disregard that advice and choose watever.

and if you do just believe the guy and take the left one, great you just avoided some potentially problematic situations. but then it's like...you haven't really learned anything. you just sort of followed watever the guy said without any input on your own thoughts and intuition. not that that's bad necessarily i mean your still all in one piece.

but if you took the right path based on your own opinion and gut watever, and you do face difficulties, you have the great opportunity to learn and live by facing life without that old guy in the middle.

sometimes the choices are hard the risks are higher. But eh that's just the way it is. you just got to learn the hard way - even if that means years. after that its just a waiting game to see if you can climb out of your own crap hole.

srry if that doesn't make sense but i'm trying here lol

being foolish is the best way to get smarter i guess
cuz you cant get any dumber
make mistakes to learn. got to remember the learn part though. That shit's important.
but it's ok because learning is automatic - unless there's something wrong with your brain or watever
i mean you cant go around just making mistakes without thinking you should change something
learning is preprogramed.

anyway, it's all within reason of course
i don't want to end up having kids playing around with knives to "learn" about its dangers

A little relfection

so i looked back at some of the stuff in my blog
and yea i pretty much just post "what bothers me"

and i can justify that because i suddenly feel defensive and all lol

i only talk about what bothers me because it gives me a way to form an argument. The more i'm bothered, the more i can talk about it

because if i think something is good, then there is no real bother in talking about. I mean all i can say it that yea, it's good, keep it that way.

on the other hand, now that i think about there might be some "good" topics that i can talk about. But i think it'll end up in an "bother" type argument anyway.

for example, I recently became obsessed with the british comedian Ricky Gervais.
He's a good comedian, makes me laugh until i piss myself, and yea. Just overall a really funny guy.
Also his shows are all good, like The Office, Extras, Life's too Short, and especially An Idiot Abroad, with pretty much anything he does with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

so how can this turn into a "bother" type thing?
well first of all, after Ricky's hosting performances at the Golden Globes, the media has panned it as bad and stuff.

Which "pisses me off" cuz it "bothers me that" he's only making fun of millionaires giving each other golden statues. I mean come on people.

Yea so before i go on any further, cuz this was meant to be a short thing, I'll just end it pretty much here.

See? i've proven my point. If something's wrong, fix it. If it's all good, then leave it as is. That's the general rule of thumb. Something i've been unconsciously following. Also because i find myself i just sound better as a cynic. It's sort of my thing really. Sad thing, but nevertheless mine.

I was told I sound better as a cynic that's why. I was told that it was my thing. So i've just sort of unconsciously stuck to it. well, now that i'm acknowledging it, i don't think it's still unconscious.
anyway, i dunno if it should stick to this shtick though.
Like i say in pretty much all of my blogs, I end up thinking that either i just written a bunch of drivel
or i sound like i have issues. or both
anyway.

we'll see.

cheers.

a little 11:26 pm thing

time to spew a bunch of random stuff now.
i do these things on whims now, before i had to plan. back in the golden days
but like a tv show, it's got to go downhill at some point

anyway
one of the things that annoy me....is my damn elbow
i have a funny elbow
i was told that
it has an extra bit of bone jutting out a little
so that instead of just a simple smooth angle when it's bending, it looks like a double chin

my elbow has a double chin

what's annoying about that is
i cant set my elbow down on any kind of hard surface, cuz it's damn uncomfortable to have that extra chin jutting on a table, setting my whole elbow at an awkward angle

but besides that, its a decent elbow. in any other situation, it gets the job done

but now that i think back a little, i think because of that extra chin, my funny bone in my elbow/arm is extra sensitive.

i remember once back in middle school while we were playing flag football, some kid and i were reaching like hell for this ball flying in the air but his arm hit mine at exactly at the funny bone part or something like that cuz next thing i knew my whole arm lost feeling and was just flopping in air
yea he got the ball

o well makes no difference i wasn't gonna get it
i just had to look the part to get some participation points

i used to be a good runner and honestly if i kept it up i would still be but i've been lazy
anyway the thing that kinda bothered me about that was that because i was good at running, people just thought i was good at sports...at every damn sport

it made me hella self conscious, plus i had low self asteem
i daren't got near a ball during a game and when i did i freaked out and lost control of the ball before i even touch - which makes more sense if you've experienced what i experienced


anyway that was my little thing i felt like i had to get out
time to get back to homework. it's gonna kill me i know it.
this weather is gonna be the end of me too. Warm weather always makes me hella lazy. On the other hand, I make myself hella lazy too.

Dunno what that means, it made more sense in my head

sometimes i feel like i should keep any half decent thought in my head so i don't end up sounding like an idiot when it comes out wrong.

Family

Goddamn
parents are confusing as hell
sometimes i know what they want from me but mostly i don't know what the hell they want
i mean give me a go damn break please

you know what, whenever adults say that "even though they are old, we still know what it's like to be a kid," they keep on proving themselves wrong. And it drives me insane

of course you don't know what it's like to be a kid again
you have vague memories of birthdays, laughing and knee scabs
that's it
that's all you can recall
and i don't mean that in a general manner
i mean literally, that's typically all adults remember
how much happier they were when they were a kid. End of story.
you forgot the other 99%
because you can't be happy every goddamn day
you're pissed most of the time and as you get older you just get more pissed

that's gonna happen to me i know it
because i don't know a single adult who still retains childhood memories that well
human history has already lasted this long and if somebody hasn't done it then nobody will

ugh i dunno, i'm not an expert
maybe there was some guy who did manage at some point but he was went unrecorded so nobody knew
actually he was probably put into the nut house cuz that's what happens when you look "too happy"
besides i'm talking about someone from ancient history - where it was pretty much 100 times worse than today cuz everything was huts, tribes and sewage

fully aware that i'm pissed right now
i'm probably gonna come back and read this one day say "damn, i had issues.."

but i do
i do have goddamn issues

it's gonna sound ridiculous and painful to say cuz it's killing me right now:
I wish my family is...awesome.

family is important man, it takes the pain to realize
for those who are reading and have perfect families, i can't convince you enough how much of a good thing you have - i'll just be wasting my time. No matter how much of a goddamn angel you are, you will never appreciate family unless something goes wrong. And suddenly it's not so perfect anymore. Then you realize that something was there inside you all the time and you never noticed it before.

family is like this core machine that is just humming and ticking away inside you.
if there is any glitch, you can repair it with a few screws and some super glue.
But super glue can crack and the screws will always come lose again. Nothing will ever replace the perfection that the original structure it had. Like i said, you don't know that it's there until you feel like something is missing, the regular ticking is gone or has gone haywire.

The glitches are permanent
you can never truly repair them.
and once you have them you feel like some internal beam has just crumbled slightly, like the pillars in old pantheon, still there, just broken.

You can be all tough and say that eh i'll just put it in the past and forget. To forget is to throw the content out of your brain so that you have completely deleted the file - forever.

and that's impossible. all you can do is just put it in the back of your head hope you don't look at something that'll make you suddenly remember. It's not that hard for that shit to come back to you. Your head is only so big, stuff is not gonna get lost so easily - if at all.

So those glitches, they are going to affect you for the rest of your life. Sometimes they'll lay dormant and you won't feel a thing. The wound is cleaned and stitched real nice and all. And it might be like that for so long that you think you have truly "left it in the past" and moved on. But it's only just fooling around. It'll fool you for so long that you'll be so convinced that you really did move on. You'll congratulate yourself.

But like the time when i saw this runner slip up and trip right before the finish line in the chicago marathon years ago, you'll find out that you congratulated much too early. It was all fake. After all that time, it was all a fake.

So you try to reason out what went wrong. Then it'll all fall into pieces and you'll react with horror as if your heart has just dropped and landed slapt on your diaphragm and sliding around there, weighing down like when you're on a hammock.  Now you see the big picture. The big goddamn picture. You were too stupid, too goddamn stupid to see it before. Like a translucent curtain had just been lifted and you realized for the first time that you were seeing everything half blurred. Censored.

And i fucking hate it. I really really really do. It pains me so much now that I can't even do anything write now but just vent it all out. i have to otherwise i'll implode - which i already feel like is starting to happen. My body is literally drooping with exhaustion and my eyes are only half open. Pain is tiring.

And there's nothing i can do about cuz that's just the way everything is. And it's been that way since. Plus i'm not a goddamn genius to solve a problem like this. Then again, i'm not an expert and i have no evidence that someone, somewhere, at some time  probably found a solution in their tribal hut full of sewage but it went unrecorded. You can never be sure of something unless you have proof.

Then you try to find the root of the problem. It's like one of those tough math problems that you think you solved but then find out that you did it wrong or something so you have to erase all the work you did. Go back to the beginning. Finally you realize with a jolt what the answer might be. You don't know for sure, cuz sometimes there is no answer key. Nevertheless, it blows your goddamn mind. Like a revelation or something. Then you downplay it cuz then again it might be wrong. The root is just of dubious origin and well...it just cold and doesn't give a damn about your effort.

well, i've got to do homework now. I can't procrastinate by moping. Yesterday I was laughing my ass off at some joke and today i'm just a wreck. That's what happens when you're too happy i guess.
It's something you got to pay for. Like when the doctor saves your life or something, they charge you for their help. You have to pay for help. Actually pay, whether it's from your heart or from your heart and through your wallet. You have got to pay.

That's why i like cops better. they don't say "glad you didn't get robbed, now pay up."
doctors are just scammers that way. One moment you're on the 5 o' clock news publicly thanking your doctor for helping your kid and then the next moment you're off camera and complaining about health bills.

ok enough, i need to get back to that homework. Can't tell my teachers that i didn't do it cuz i was fucking depressed.

But talking about this helps. A little, but it does.

i'll just say this for all the good that it'll do: i wish that everything in my family is alright.
in any case, in a rare case of optimism from me, some people have got it worse than i do, so i shouldn't be complaining too much.
when i think about it, it's not that bad i guess
but when i really think about it, it is that bad...


I'll try to find something cheerful the next time.

Chemistry is better than "chem :)" now

Jesus you know what's bothering me?
i mean
jesus, you know what's bothering me?
i think i just made it worse.

to clarify i'm not actually talking to jesus, although if he's out there he'll be more than welcome to listen in.
lost in translation - the digital age edition, that's something i will also be addressing a little

ok back to what's pissing me off at this moment
There are people out there on their email/facebook/etc. statuses saying stuff like:

"ice cream :)"
"watching a movie :)"

those make me sufficiently annoyed.
the :) is added not because out of habit, but rather to make it SEEM like it's out of habit
those people who put that are aware that they are sounding ditzy and pretentious by documenting their friggen boring, menial, daily activities so they try to mellow it out with a smiley face.
the smiley face implies several things, the most prominent of which are:

1. they have are having a blast all day everyday
2. their life is awesome 24/7
3. they are nice, cute, and bubbly people  - WHEN I KNOW THEY ARE NOT

godamn...i mean i know these people. i KNOW these people.
now of course i don't know know them like i know their deep dark secrets
but let's clarify again - i know enough - to KNOW.

but the stuff that makes me absolutely, positively, annoyed is stuff like this:

"chem :)"

before i go on a rant i need to give a little background story.

In the place where i live, it is not only good to be a nerd, but GREAT. i mean jocks (if there are truly any) have to compete with nerds. Of course it's not always black and white and the old archaic and typical high school hierarchy which has been ingrained by mainly midwestern high schools and 80s teen movies sometime seep in anyway. Nevertheless, it's basically a very academically competitive bubble of a place - which is mostly a good thing. One word to sum it up: asians. nuff said.

anyway so there it is.
so studying is good.
chem or "chemistry" is good.
:) "good"

now you've got that entire history of the place all jammed pack in to a word an emoticon.
it's a lot to take in.
and i friggen hate it.
Still not following? No problem, I was gonna continue anyway.

I'm not against studying or academics. It's a good thing. We're helping build the future of America and all that stuff...
but some people take it too much to heart and they like to show it off
they like to make out that they are smarter and ultimately better than you
the reason i hate "chem :)" is basically the same reason why i hate "ice cream :)"

because of these things that it implies:

1. they can do it all: study their ass of till the morning and show up to school with a smile on their face
2. (continuation of 1) their life is awesome because they are just natural jugglers
3. they love chemistry and is having a blast (or watever academic subject)
4. they are good at chemistry (you can't like something you're not good at)
5. they are diligent and model students
6. they are bound to good colleges
7. they are gonna be successful engineers and watever phony shit that they actually hate
8. they are participating in national science fairs in New York

But wait! there's more:

9. you don't like chemistry (even if you do - you'll feel suddenly defensive or aggressive)
10. you suck at chemistry and hate its guts(again, even if you don't)
11. you aren't diligent, you're a procrastinator (that's uncalled for because everyone procrastinates)
12. you aren't bound to good colleges
13. you aren't gonna be a successful engineer and wat not
14. you are not fattening up your resume with science fairs

oh yea:

15. your life is not awesome
16. and you can't handle it all

ok i'm biased and all but there is some truth in this
people, especially at this age perceive others through two mediums: real life interactions and the digital interface.

Most of the time you see them at school, and it's usually at lunch when everyone is just chillin'
that's 25% i'd say of your perception of others
the other 75% is when you go home and open gmail and facebook and people has already updated their stats.
and in this 75%, you get shit like "chem :)" or "physics :)" all the damn time
i know the logic and instead of devoting a paragraph into explaining this, i'll just give you a before and after thing:

"chem"     vs.      "chem :)"

see my point now?
the latter makes it seem like the person is actually and i mean ACTUALLY enjoying it
when you just HEARD the person complain about it during lunch that very day with plenty of inappropriate vocabulary.

*sigh
everything on the internet is....so masked
and i understand why people do that
i mean i don't wanna hear your deep dark secrets unless i'm close to you or you are in desperate need of help or i'm getting paid to do it.

on the other hand, it opposite gets a little overboard sometimes
everything sounds so happy - and that's not natural

anyway
here's my rant
hope you are...amused, to say the least.

Feeling bad for myself and Chocolate Bark - it's all relevant

ah it's been a while

thank you to all the fans who have stuck around all this time....hello?

just kidding, i know you guys are all there

and if not, well....i can be very imaginative..

anyway 

today i've discovered that i'm can a very selfish person

and it's not specifically by anything i've done exactly..it's more like i've just noticed these little things that i do all the time and it's piled up quite noticeably

no particular epiphany, just sat around on my chair with my snow jacket wrapped around my waist comfortably because wearing it makes me feel sleepy

that's what happens when you wear something or feel something that's too comfortable - you can get knocked out really fast

ok off topic as usual

so i was just sitting around looking at my desk, forgetting what i was suppose to do next, and think that my desk is really messy. 

then just for something to do or to see something that'll jog my memory (which i had just lost in the last 3 secs) i opened a drawer and found a Trader Joe's chocolate bark metal box with christmas themed and everything. 

i got it as a secret santa present a few years ago from some random kid who actually made an effort

Actually made an effort. ACTUALLY made an EFFORT. 

which consequently made me feel like a bratty arrogant too cool for school punkass kid

i mean i felt so bad cuz i barely tried. My only excuse - which now seems completely lame - at the time was "I have other shit to do"

the thing is, initially i felt bad, but then i realized that this kid, when i found out who my secret santa was, was actually someone i was annoyed of. 

i mean he will pile on the horse manure to sound nice and next he'll be bad mouthing - or so i have gathered from my minimal observations

but now I feel like a first class A-hole

Worst of all, for a great deal of time after the whole secret santa thing was over (which i have to admit cause me more stress than it should've once i discovered that people took it seriously) I still didn't feel any remorse or gratitude towards my chocolate bark gift. 

it might have something to do with the fact that i don't like chocolate bark with peppermint chunks all over it. it was dark chocolate too. i don't like dark chocolate. i mean they really try to make it..like bark.

still though, i guess feeling bad is something now. I mean i didn't even feel that bad before. 

...and that just made it sound even worse for me. I'll never be able to reason my way out of this one. 

all in all, i just discovered that no matter how good i try to be, i find myself full of shit anyway.  

goodness sometimes when i look back at what i had just written, i think "what is this drivel...." 

and then i publish it. 

cheers.