Gotta be a better way...

... to do pretty much everything. I wish I could explain why I stopped writing, except, looking at it all now, that the whole blog is whiny and selfish, and I'd really like not to be those things anymore. As for an update, well, I was trying to find a picture, but I didn't find anything satisfactory, so here's how I am;

It feels as though there's something grinding in the back of my mind. I was gonna use "droning," but grinding is better, I think. Most of the time, I can distract myself in some thing or another, nice song or good conversation or something. There times where it gets "louder," to the point that the grinding becomes a metallic screech. There's an in-between, but that's still under the label of tolerable.

I've had some "arguments" with people that have gone wrong because of a very specific form of misunderstanding. I use quotation marks because we clearly disagreed, but without anyone knowing how or why, or where that disconnect was. One notable instance was over some ill-deserved outrage (in my opinion) over a tax hike on tanning salons. The initial comment was something like "Really? They're gonna tax THIS too?" to which I gave a simple enough answer-- the government taxes plenty of things, and tanning is pretty bad for you anyway, since it causes cancer and all, so, along the lines of other harmful services and products that have been taxed, like tobacco, why not this? It would help cut down on people overcooking themselves on tanning beds, which may help lower melanoma rates, and those who still insisted on turning their hides into a rugged leather would be contributing to tax revenues.

The responses were idiotic. I got one woman who was telling me about her experiences with psoriasis and another who was straw-manning me on the political side, making me out to be a proud red worker bee, and didn't you know conformity is great, comrades? I decided to try and keep my cool. If I could show them what's what, if I work out my points clearly and rationally, and back them up with some good info, then they could at least see what I meant, right?

Not a chance. Psoriasis lady insisted that the tanning tax would hurt people like her, who absolutely NEED their 15 minutes under a bed to keep their condition under control, doctors orders. Well, because I am at least slightly resourceful, I went digging for answers. As it turns out, a tanning bed is the very -last- thing a doctor would recommend, and it would be more of a suggestion, not a medically prescribed treatment. First, they would prescribe "light therapy," but the fact of the matter is that there are not many light therapy clinics. The difference between light therapy beds and tanning beds are fairly significant. Therapy bulbs are white light, tanning beds are blue, and whichever ray (UVA or UVB, I don't remember, it's not important anymore) that psoriasis patients needed were almost completely absent in the blue tanning lights. There was a lot of stuff about vitamin D production, too, which tanning beds mostly sucked for. The only advantages to a tanning bed were that it was cheaper than therapy and quicker (though not safer or by any means better) than sunbathing.

I plastered source after source (.govs and .orgs, and only big names for the latter) in a slow, deliberate answer, where I made the case that what psoriasis patients needed was appropriate health care (via light therapy or anything I could find that was actually medically advisable [tanning beds are not]), and even after admitting that doctors would whisper it as a latch ditch effort to help these kinds of people who may not have access to better things, the response I got was something like "Yeah, well, my doctor TOLD me to, so THERE!" I have graciously added capitalization and punctuation.

The only incident the political woman had worth mentioning is when she tried posting "sources." What a bunch of shit. One was a youtube video of a town hall-style meeting with Barack Obama about health care (I can't find it, this was probably a year or more ago). I didn't understand it at first, but then it clicked-- I was supposed to take a certain phrase Barack Obama said literally, but I didn't, because that's not what he meant at all. Some lady had asked him a question about a specific situation involving her elderly mother. She was in failing health, so what would happen? Obama's response wasn't carefully worded enough, so it came out sounding like the doctor was just gonna put the old bat down. This is as close to the end of the phrase as I can muster: "...the family will have to get together and talk about it, and the doctor will have to decide what the appropriate course of action is." Ehh, I think I slanted that a bit harsher, because it was REALLY innocuous to me at the time, but I can't recall the exact quote. All I remember is that I was supposed to hear synchronous boot stepping and see BIG BROTHER's face, because Barack Obama was obviously gonna kill all of our grandma's.

I ended up telling them to fuck off and die because they're so goddamn stupid, although in a much grander fashion, and with marginally more tact. It just got to the point where reading their retarded attempts at arguing filled my head with the sound of screaming metal-on-metal, as if two buzz saws were mating on some sheet metal. It's like that for a lot of things now.

So I didn't vote on November 2. I have yet to hear a good reason why I should have. This resulted in another "argument" where I laid out my position (maybe not as clearly as it could have been), and was met all around with non-answers. I asked why I should have, and one of the comments was "If you don't know, you better ask somebody." Seriously. Here's why I didn't-- I don't give a damn about any of the gubernatorial candidates. Virg Bernero is a douche, and the Republican (I don't remember his name) was even less impressive. Here's one more-- I would have had to make the normally 35 minute one-way drive twice in rush hour, gotten done voting at the busiest time of the day, and then finish eating in under two hours, between 5 and 7, my last class and kendo in the gym. Not worth it for two interchangeable politicians who probably won't bring Michigan out of it's hole.

I dunno if I should publish a pamphlet or what. "How to Successfully Make Your Point Without Driving Sean to Murder". It just seems like there are too many people who don't know what a sound argument or good information is. For whatever reason, all the conservatives I've tried to talk to, be it a crazy old Catholic lady or some friends who really like AK's, get this weird air about them, where they try spooking me into thinking I'm about to lose all of my human rights, but they do so by spouting hyperbolic gibberish. We don't live in a dystopian sci fi novel, so stop fucking quoting them to make a political point. I've read them, these wild-eyed paranoiacs take way too much to heart, and even more out of context.

I've pretty much lost faith and interest in politics, don't care anymore.

In the all-seeing eye

So, having proclaimed to the world my aims of mad science and supervillainy, I've begun the C++ for Haiku OS tutorials. Of course, I started them while waiting for the melatonin to kick in, so as soon as the compiler was giving me shit (I think I may have to take a longer approach to this particular problem, but I wasn't willing to try at 6 am) I went to sleep.

I really wanna help with Haiku, but I have a feeling it's going to take a long time. On their development page, they specify how they want developers to work, and while I fully understand the need for a standardized form, it feels confining. Shiny, C++-only code, with lots of notes as to what you did and why and blah blah blah, lots of white space and extra typing. Makes me wonder what people would do if they just dipped into Perl, Python, or Ruby.

I think I just have four more weeks of classes for this semester. And thank God for that. Gotta bit more to do than usual, though. Short essay due this week, rewrite of an old one due next week, then our biggest paper due the week after, for English. Japanese, I gotta make up a test I missed in addition to this unit's test. Psych is Psych, there's nothing unusual happening there. The short essay for English would be exciting if I knew what to do. We have to write a review for a film or album, but it has to be something we haven't seen or heard before, and deciding what to review is proving difficult. Japanese is gonna be rough, just because I now need to review two separate units, but I should be okay, I think.

Since my mom asked me if I was going to Eastern this fall, I've been thinking about it a lot. I'm not going this fall, but I do I want to go sooner than Fall '11, so I'm planning for January. Mom is in the loop, and I'm gonna start scouting for apartments in the summer, because that's how far ahead apartment leases free up and also disappear. It's pretty exciting.

The only downside is that Jon is one of those people who can't say "no." He spoke with his friend Ted, who is finishing up a bachelor's, and told him about Eastern's grad programs, and Ted has decided to come up this way, under the assumption that he and Jon were going to live together. Now, because Jon has no spine, they will, but Jon is also naive, and thinks the three of us are going to find an apartment. I told him we weren't going to find a three-bedroom apartment in Ypsilanti, but he retains the thought (ludicrous hope) that we'll just "find something." I'm looking for apartments alone at this point, because that's the realistic situation. Even if we did manage to find some miraculously cheap three-bed place, there would need to be at least two bathrooms, because three guys to one bathroom is not an acceptable ratio outside of a college dorm (although in that case, I wish I could say it wasn't, because it's horrible).

There's one reason I want to get back to EMU for that is academic. I want to take linguistics classes already! I should technically be done with all this liberal arts stuff before I get back out to Ypsi, but part of me fears that I'll have to redo something. But if I can go out there and just get started on the things I WANT, that'd be great. I know I won't have to take math again, so that's awesome. English, maybe, depending on the exact bits. The exact science of transfer credits escapes me, but I have an appointment with a counselor on Friday, so I will hopefully have answers.

As for the loan situation, I'm stuck paying out of pocket. Again. The funniest thing that has happened on this front is getting my FAFSA info back-- Eastern sent me a letter telling exactly which loans and how much they were willing to give me. I didn't even ask them for any of that information. I did not hear anything from OCC. One more reason I'm ready to go back.

Sean

Another case of "trying to post and then I don't."

Health care reform was passed in the house a little while ago. It's not perfect, because we had to drop the "dreaded" public option, and then we punched holes through what was left, and the funny part is that is was to appease moderate and conservative Democrats-- the Republican platform of "ALWAYS NO" made reaching out to them entirely pointless. One Republican guy called a PRO-LIFE Democrat (our very own Representative Bart Stupak) a "baby killer" in the middle of some speech that was -denouncing- the pro-choice measures in the bill, or maybe the fact that they were passing it without the Stupak/pro-life Amendment. Every moment of this ignorance and insanity is recorded; Jon made us watch CSPAN as it was happening (it was not fun).

The only thing that bothers me is that only the Democrats had dissenting members, and not because they voted against something that will help people, but because of the relentless uniformity of the Republican party. Democrats have liberal, moderate, and yes, even conservative members. Republicans have True Conservatives and those they brand RINO's. I find it very unsettling that the party proclaiming freedom and democracy marches so lockstep. Maybe a little funny, too.

I'm about to get all four seasons of Batman: The Animated Series. It's a fantastic cartoon. Started up in 1992, right after the Burton/Keaton Batman movies. It won a couple of Emmy's in its day, and it created what I feel are closest to the ideal versions of each character that could actually exist. I've been thinking about Batman and the Joker a lot recently, and I realized I needed to get reacquainted, since the most recent thing I'd seen or read was The Dark Knight a couple years ago, and all I left is whatever I happened to remember over years of reading and watching-- totally reliable, that ole grey matter, am I right? I've been pretty annoyed, ever since The Dark Knight came out, with how many Heath Ledger fans wormed their way into Batman and claimed Ledger's performance as THE BEST JOKER EVER. This is not true, but again, it's been forever since I've witnessed a good contender, so, Batman: The Animated Series. Dunno which comics I need to scrounge up, but a good rule of thumb for sizing up any character in comics is to 1) get a whole bunch, and 2) average it all out. I feel, though, that a lot of writers try to write the Joker as too dark. I'll show them.

Heading out to Ypsi again, not sure how much sleep I'll get. Nabbed some melatonin the past couple of nights, but ended up sleeping for 11-12 hours each day, so... Not doing that, need to be up.

Sean

What a find!

I use this toolbar add on called StumbleUpon, and I love it to death. I think my dad was right in comparing it to Pandora. Upon initial use, you choose a number of tags related to interests, and they can be general or specific. Then, you hit the Stumble button, and a random page with a randomly selected tag from your choices pops up. Your stumbles are then honed by what you approve and disapprove of. New pages are added when users "thumbs-up" a page that was not previously tagged.

A while ago, I added "open source" to my tags, and today, I feel like I struck gold. It was a picture titled "Open Source, Open World." It started with a timeline of the 20th century, beginning with automakers striking down an attempt to patent the combustion engine, then moving towards computer stuff, highlighting the initial group efforts of scientists and hobbyists. I guess things like UNIX were free at first, then locked down. It goes on to illustrate the GNU project and the proliferation of Linux distros by country (I guess all of Cuba uses Linux, go fig). Next was browsers, then phone stuff, and tech tech tech.

But then! Things besides tech started showing up, beginning with OpenCola (it's not Coke, though, so it's a lie), Wikimedia and Project Gutenberg (public domain media things), Science Commons, which I've used for a paper, some other sciencey stuff, and then Open Courseware.

WHAT O_O.

Yeah, courseware. I immediately ran to Google and found that MIT has tons of old courses available online! It's not the full thing-- very often, it's not even most. What chunks there are depend on the level of the class. Intro to Linguistics, for instance, has more resources available than Linguistic Theory and the Japanese Language. It's very exciting, though, because they have bits and pieces of a lot of different things. Even still, it's far from a complete picture, but I like it.

The information in these things could probably be found in books or websites, but classes just seem accessible to me. I like the idea of structure, and that's what I feel classes provide (when they don't suck!). Still, it all comes down to motivation. I will probably be scouring MIT's site, and looking for a book or something on the side, because Linguistics is the field I'd like to study. I can't do it at OCC, so it's gonna be on my time, and until I find a book that looks idiot-friendly, I have to make do with the internet. We all know how utterly devoid of useful information THAT is, right??

I dunno, I'm tired and excited. I ought to do some studying for Japanese before I get too lost in something else, though. Mid-term's this week, and I'm gonna be busy on Friday, I think. Bill is gonna be brewing beer for real instead of from a kit. Making his own wort and whatnot. It should be interesting.

Next week, I'm hoping to spend more than a few hours on one day in Ypsi.

Sean

Alright. There's a disconnect here. I'm looking for "where" and having trouble.

I think I know what you're saying, but to be honest, even the people closest around me are entirely incomprehensible to me at times. I dunno why I just don't get things that seem obvious, but it happens.

Like any attempt to pin a behavioral trait, whatever I said is subject to exception, and doesn't strictly apply to reality. I know that. I also exaggerated, because I was probably in some sort of mood. If I were even half-right about a single sweeping statement I've made, I'd be invited to soooo many thinktanks and conferences and whatnot for my "unique insight" on human behavior.

As for not getting my hopes up, well, the thing about my plans is that they take place over months and years. Nine months so far, and over a year to go. This will happen, barring catastrophe. I will finish OCC, at the very least. The rest is theoretical, but I need to have an idea for something, because going in blind has not served me well in the past. If it seems like I'm expecting everything to go right all the time, please keep in mind that I'm hoping for the best. I do have plans for the worst, and everything in between, but I'm through wandering and wondering. It's gotten me nowhere, and I'm sick of nowhere.

It's slow going. I am impatient. At this point, I might start taking full time classes instead of part-time, since I know how stupidly low the work requirement actually is at this school. Maybe it won't take another fifteen months. Who knows?

Sean

Blegf

I must have written a half a dozen drafts that won't be posted. Some of them are dreary, some of them are super-political, and I just stopped writing halfway through each of them. I dunno what to say in this blog anymore. This one will be full neurotic rambling too, but I feel like that's a drag to read, and that makes me ask why I'm writing. Pretty lame circle of events. I'll keep people updated in the same way I have been, I spose.

So, seeing my last post was before I started school this semester, here's how classes are--- they suck. I keep going into them all naive and optimistic, only to be let down. Constantly. Only Japanese has been good. We got a really easy-going teacher, and a class of six or so people. I was surprised to find how much I enjoy a tiny class. He keeps us on our toes, too, so I may actually be learning.

It is not so with English and Psych. If I've learned anything, it's the same lesson I learned with Logic-- expectations are extremely low. Psych is just the same song and dance as it was in Summer II, homework is notes, and every class is a ridiculous lecture with a quiz or test. And I mean ridiculous lecture. This man says things that make ME uncomfortable. God, I cannot believe the foolish things this man says. How he got a PhD will forever be a mystery to me. I'm not going to repeat anything he says, because his ideas are so stupid or inappropriate that they make me cringe. For a man who proclaims his love for science, that his religion is science, and that more people need to think like scientists, well, he does the opposite. He speaks largely in supposition and makes broad conclusions based on anecdotal premises! AAAAUGGGH. He makes my brain cry blood.

It took me three weeks to figure out this English Composition class is a waste of my time and money. We began writing drafts of our first paper (which I'm sort of working on while I write this) and then started talking about grammar. I almost perked at that, because even though I use things like commas and apostrophes, I was sure I would learn something I hadn't known before, like semi-colons. Yeah, I never -really- know where to use a semi-colon. But... then we started going over things I learned in seventh grade. I was having flashbacks. When we started doing class work, it consisted of identifying where commas and periods go. PEOPLE WERE GETTING THEM WRONG. I'm sorry, if you come out of high school not knowing what's wrong with a run on sentence, you need to go back.

The paper is due tomorrow. The subject is a remembered event, and has to be under a thousand words. I'm basically done. It's not great, but ya know what? It doesn't have to be. Not when the people around me are barely literate. I'm done getting myself twisted up over OCC, because nothing will need to be absolutely perfect, and I'd just be wasting sleep on worry.

That's basically where I am in life right now. There's no one around to impress, no reason to buckle down, no reason to sell out or change. It's boring and frustrating, but I still find hope in planning. Last time I wrote a little about my Adult theory, and I'm gonna write a little more. It may even have to do with what I wrote in the other part of this paragraph!

Adulthood, the way I see it, is a personality trait. I don't believe everyone has it, and I'm not gonna venture into actual psychology to try and validate it or explain where it comes from. Just observation. Not all mature people are Adults, I would say, because my definition is more narrow. Adults are boring. Adults thrive in the mundane. They exist to fulfill expectation. Weird, unspoken, alien expectations. They don't do things that are "silly" or "stupid", because that is not what Adults do. Not prim and proper, more like "stuck." Stuck in the day-to-day, stuck in their jobs, stuck in minute problems. Never fantasizing, never dreaming, never creating.

I can't begin to guess how many Adults there are according to my somewhat specific category. I wouldn't say all, I wouldn't say most, but I would say a substantial amount. I don't understand them at all. They're alien to me. Part of why I speak so much about politics and religion is because those are things I can bring up and connect with virtually everyone on, regardless of stance. They're like trade languages. But go outside of those things, and your choices are left at small talk. I loathe small talk.

The thing they have going for them, though, is that they're often functioning members of society. They get the grades and jobs they're expected to, they have the relationships they're expected to. They make things work.

And now to tie things together! It is my plan, though more long-term than short, to craft Adult Sean. This will happen more after I've gone to Eastern, where I have the space to do the things needed to form this new persona. The aim is more towards Gentleman Sean than Adult Sean, but more on that in a minute. I sort of conveyed the idea to grandma, who suggested I be myself, but as I told her, if myself is dysfunctional in the "real world," then I need to at least lie and pretend I function. It would be a lie because I am not an Adult, you see.

Gentleman is a bit different. I use the word more in the way of "man's man" than "prim and proper." I've read some ideas on what a modern gentleman might be, and I like some of it. Not just on a date, and not just etiquette, but all the time gentlemanliness. Sociable, knowledgeable, fun, and small doses of silly? Sign me up. The whole premise is an ideal, and I think fewer people are capable of being so... capable, I guess, as these gentleman-theorists would say while peddling a book or seminar or something (I saw a link for a seminar and shook my head). But this too would require fundamental changes in my behavior.

That's what I like thinking about, when I think about my future. Mostly, it's because I'm tired of being in my house, tired of being a child. You're always a child in your parents' house, and I want out. It's just gonna take time. I'm planning out a few meals for Fine Dining Night at my place in Ypsi. I'm not very far into the actual meal itself (I'm on the appetizer-- grilled tomato gazpacho), but I can already see who's there and how surprised they are that I could do something SO FUCKING CLASSY. It knocks their socks off and I win.

Sean

School in... five days??

Just ordered my books for Psych and English. The books I got for Japanese are good for three classes-- the one I took, the one I'm taking, and the one I will be taking in the fall.

I'm feeling better about this semester. English Comp should be a no-brainer, since it's required to graduate. Child Psych will hopefully be less of an ordeal than Summer II's Intro to Psych, if only because I have to go once a week instead of twice. Japanese will be the most tasking, I think. That one requires less regurgitation and more actual thought. I've been peeking ahead so I can start off well.

I spoke with my dad the other day about programming. I've been looking at an assortment of guides on beginner's stuff, but none of it's really going anywhere. They walk me through the Hello World program, make a few other points (this C++ one I'm reading is more thorough, with loops and variables and conditional whatchacall'ems) and then say "Good luck." I don't know what I'm supposed to do with whatever knowledge I've gleaned. I've read that practice is the name of the game, but... what the hell am I supposed to practice, exactly? I can make a crappy calculator in C. I suppose part of the problem is that I'm not focusing. I looked at guides in C, C++, and Python, and my friend Bill said he'd lend me a book on Java if he didn't already give it away.

The whole reason I thought about programming was because I saw a group on Facebook for Haiku OS-- a successor to BeOS, something we'd used when I was a kid. There wasn't a whole lot to it, as I remember, but that's because I was a kid, and all I did on the computer at that time was write and play games (not that it's much different now). I want to get into programming because I want to know how Be worked, how Haiku works, and mostly, so I can contribute to open-source community projects. I fell in love with the idea of community-run development when I read about Linux. About how many man hours Linux took to develop and how much it would have cost a software company. What resonated with me was the fact that things like Linux can thrive purely because enough people care, and the amount of infrastructure and wage slavery to produce the same thing with the same quality is almost infeasible.

The points I am trying together are; "I'm not getting anywhere with programming because I'm looking at too many things", and "I want to aid in the development of open source awesomeness, like HaikuOS." I originally just wanted to learn Python, because it's said to be clear cut and powerful. However, Haiku is being developed in C++, so I'd either need to start there, or learn it concurrently with Python. And I desperately need some good, guided study, not a "Just practice!" pep talk.

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY TALK! I watched a video this morning about how Neo-Nazi's are using the incredible levels of hatred in the radical conservative movement to work their way into mainstream politics. How insane has the world gone when Neo-Nazi's are being taken seriously in America?! The video, a news report by Al Jazeera English, either shows or suggests (point of view, I'd say) that a lot of the fervor being whipped up by people like Tea Party jackoffs and GLENN BECK, MAY HE BURN FOREVER, has a lot to do with racism. The fact that the National Socialist Movement (ie, Neo-Nazi's) have adopted the same rhetoric as mainstream conservatives makes the swelling of "real patriots" somewhat HOLYSHITHORRIFYING. Man, if I ever met that Joe the Plumber douchebag, I'm gonna love seeing the look on his face when I tell him there are some Nazi's who agree with him in his politics. SERIOUSLY, NAZI'S. Nazi's aren't the reason I'm gonna post the video, though. I heard this guy talking about the Tea Party people, and the message of "taking back OUR America," and it was interesting to me because of the kind of America these people want, since it's a totally implicit statement. The video says a primarily Christian America, and, to tie in to the rest of the its message, White, Christian America. I'd say the relationship between white people and the message of a Christian America is spurious, but no one can say authoritatively either way, I suppose.

Sean