To the Veterans

I had a lot of trouble earlier this year trying to do a Memorial Day session, and so, well, I had a lot of trouble writing this for Veteran's Day. But I have a great deal of respect for veterans. Risking your life to protect your country is truly noble. I'm not sure exactly what to say more than that really.

Karaoke equals awesome

Now I'm just saying. That's how I disarm all objections to all of my idiotic statements, I'm just saying. But Karaoke equals awesome is true and you know it, I know it, and if you're snickering because I said it, it's because you're lamitude is just so massive it's cutting off oxygen to your brain.

So since Karoke equals awesome and awesome band equals awesome, Live Band Karaoke (if you have an awesome band, which was the case with the Human Karaoke Experience) equals mega awesome, and so I had a good night last night.

I hit up Live Band Karoke, hosted by the Rutgers University Planning Association (RUPA!) (always a fan of their work) and I partied like it was some year that's highly associated with partying. It would have been cooler if more people had been there but...

Well, let me say before I just ramble on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

Ok, well why was this so cool:

First of all the band was pretty sweet.

Second the song list was massive. Not completely massive, but pretty massive.

Third the singers were pretty good. I mean some were a little tone deaf, a little off beat, a little sloppy with the lyrics and didn't know exactly when to start and stop (ie, some of the singers were a little bit like me), but there were a lot of impressive voices on display.

Fourthly, you're always discouraged from singing like a jackass, so why not go somewhere where you're actually encouraged to sing like a jackass.

So that was cool. And it was fun. It was good to have fun. It's been a taxing week, and so it's nice to feel alive like that. I only wished I felt the same off stage as I did on stage. On stage, or at least once I got about half-way into the song, I felt like a king, like I could do anything. But I step off, and I bit by bit I slip into my anxiety shell again. Most of the night I was sitting by this pretty girl and she even seemed to like my performances on stage, but did I say anything to her? No. Sure I didn't know what to say, but screw that, if I had tried at least well I could say I tried, but I didn't.

Well, in honor of karaoke and all those times I should have asked a girl out and didn't (including times when everything was so perfect, but...) (Weezer's Perfect Situation):

What's the deal with my brain,
Why I am so utterly insane, (completely)
In a perfect situation I let love down the drain,
Here's the pitch
Sure and straight
All I need to do swing
And I'm a hero
But I'm a zero (sound familiar)

Lonely nights once again, (Oh yeah)
Now this is getting unbelievable
Because I could not have it better (maybe I could but things are getting pretty good)
But I cannot get no love
From the girls all around (They never give no love to the Rand-man)
As they search the night for someone to hold on to
They just past through (They always do)

Singing Oooooh
Oooooh
Singing Ooooh
Oooooh

Get your hands off the girl
Can't you see that she belongs to me (well that never happened to me really)
And I do not appreciate this excess company
But I can't satisfy all her needs (well, that will probably happen to me later)
And so she starts to wander,
Who can blame her? (I sure can't)

Singing Ooooh
Ooooh
Singing Ooooh
Ooooh

Tell me there's a reason out there
Leading me to be prepared
For that day something really special might come
Tell me there's a moment for me
I don't want to be lonely
For the rest of my days on earth (sing it brother!)

(Guitar Solo! (that's one thing about the Human Karaoke Experience, awesome guitar solos))

Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh

Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh


So that was not exactly Weezer's lyrics, that was my recollection aided by a lyrics site, you can find probably more close to Weezer's lyrics here. Also I feel obliged to tell you that this is from Weezer's recent album, Make Believe. It also has a sweet video, it's not a 1-1 translation of the lyrics but it captures that same emotion of longing. And here's a cool AMV with Midori Days, (an anime and manga that's awesome), that also captures that terrible loneliness despite all the love you see around you (although it's a more literal video that Weezer's).

Anywho, I need to go and well, go home, but for all you cool cats out there, stay awesome. And take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember, Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And the return never felt better, except the time it did

So I've been missing some sessions lately. And I'm not going to elaborate why. Deal with it (preferably by giving me lots of money, you know if I had lots of money I wouldn't be missing as many sessions). Anywho, I have a funny story to tell you my good reader people and such, today I went a-speed-dating. Brutal. Yeah, just brutal. 3-min's per girl. Rapid fire questioning, the only way to avoid it: think of as many questions as you can. Blanking out 99% of the time. Constantly moving. Trying hard to scribble down the right name and number on the interest sheet so that she can get your contact info. Yeah, just brutal. And what do you get? A very off chance of actually making an impression on a girl. Now I'm awesome, but sometimes people don't realize that about me at first, they should, but sometimes it just doesn't happen, it's nobody's fault really (except yours Mel).

So that's speed dating. But heck, somebody might call me up and I might be able to get something nice from all this and that, so it's good stuff. Well, it's still brutal. I've got to wonder overall is all dating like this? Probably not. I mean if I know the girl decently before hand, her company will probably be pleasant, but there's a degree of nervousness that's inevitable in dating that just sucks. And there's so many people to go through before you hit one where she likes you and you like her and in that special way that a relationship forms. And it's tiring. Still no pain, no gain. But it would be nice if people just recognized my awesomeness, assessed their compatibility to my awesomeness and just came to me (I suppose this would be similar to saying I wished girls asked guys out more, so yeah, I'll say that, but I'm also saying that more people should call me awesome, for I AM RAND!!!).

Anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Even in sorrow life remains

I remember a conversation I had in middle school. It was after the Columbine Massacre, I was talking to some friends, and we were talking I guess about the impact that the Massacre would have on our lives. And I remarked how we would probably forget this in a week or two maybe remember it a little a year from now, but eventually forget it completely. It seems a little cynical looking back on it. It also feels immensely sad.

I sometimes feel like the sorrow of a tragedy should be carried with you forever, and to some degree that's true. You can incorporate lessons and memories into your mind and thoughts. But the full morning of the tragedy has to end, and relatively quickly at that. Because we need to live.

It still seems like a crappy way to run things, but what do I know.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life

Hello folks and stuff (it would be cool if some stuff were reading this webpost, but alas, my audience is mostly made up of folks).

Yesterday I was planning a big statement on the desperate situation I was in and how I was just barely pulling things off by the skin of my ass, but it was All Saint's Day and so I decided to write about that.

As to my situation, I've been having trouble getting my work done, I don't know why, but it's like this. I had on my computer for two-three days all the necessary components to make a project over a week overdue work and I resisted putting it all together. Instead I fiddled with things, tried to make things cleaner, and then I tried to make things more complex. By the end I had about 2 and 1/2 versions of the program that should have worked. Eventually I settled down my brain enough to take the simplest version, sand off the rough edges and send it off.

But why?

I can't say I'm sure. But there has to be a why.

Every action needs a reason and every inaction needs a reason, it's impossible to really and truly be still. That's the problem with nihilism, the enthusiasm for the purposelessness of life is never strong enough to stop the instinct to act or to purposefully be inactive. To commit suicide would take a heck of a reason (usually self-hatred), but to live requires acting, or at the very least responding to the actions that surround us. And whatever our response is that has a reason.

But why did I just screw myself over by leaving my project undone for a week? I don't know, maybe it was biology, maybe nurture, the point is it was something that I had to away from.

Curiosity drives me to investigate my mental state, but also a desire to prevent problems from happening again. But still, worrying too much about my mental problems breed more problems which distracts me from bigger concerns...

What are the bigger concerns? Life, Truth, Love, etc. If I went by my feelings, and especially my feelings last week I would say nothing, nothing mattered, and eventually as the pains in my depression grew I would simply conclude that avoidance of pain mattered only and then flip, I'll be dead. But instead I take what feels to be the core and most beautiful principle of my beliefs, and then use reason and experience to go from there. And that's how I got to here, a follower of God Most High.

But that has nothing to do with the title of this session. I've been rambling, but not unpleasantly, and yet I still feel compelled to stop. So's your face! It always works.

Anyways, so take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Happy All Saint's Day

I am actually kind of sad that I didn't attend Church today, I actually didn't remember that it was All Saint's Day until a few minutes ago. I said a prayer but I really wished I had celebrated things more properly. But while I like attending Church on All Saint's Day, it never had the same significance to me as say Good Friday or even Ash Wednesday.

Still, let be on your mind that this is a holy day, well all days are holy days really, but this more so than normal, as it is scheduled to concentrate all of our minds on God.

I've never been terribly sure of the significance of All Saint's Day, but in my mind it is a call to our own possibilities with God's help. It is a call to recognize, honor and venerate the saints who have gone before us, but it is also a call to recognize that with God's help even the lowest of us can become saints. I've never been to big on the role of saint's as intermediaries between us and God, I recognize it, and occasionally I'll say saint's prayers (of course I say often the Hail Mary, the prayer of the Queen of Saints, Mary, the Mother of God), but I've never had the degree of personal connection with a saint that made me concentrate on him or her as my special intercessor. Yet I take great significance to the role of saints as role models. Although, we might not be able to replicate exactly the circumstances they lived in (especially given the number of saints living way back in history), but we can imitate their spiritual lessons. I recently gave a speech about this sort of in Church, basically it was St. Francis' day and St. Francis is the patron saint of the MCYM (Malankara Catholic Youth Movement), and basically I said that we should imitate St. Francis' devotion to God and his devotion to doing God's will despite the other plans his father had for him. Another point to remember that St. Francis measured his success by his following God's will and not the money or success he achieved, something else to imitate.

To be honest I can't remember exactly what I said since I didn't write anything down, I was in a bit of a breakdown when I gave the speech and so I just remembered a couple main points in my head and I just let it flow out. That it came out pretty decent and conveying some good points about religion is perhaps a little bit of a miracle (I'll talk more about my personal take on miracles later). But the point is that we can imitate the spiritual lives of saints by taking the lessons of their relationships with God. Now saints weren't always right in their opinions (St. Augustine had some really weird views on plays (although he shared this with Plato)), nor did they necessarily live spotless lives (St. Augustine here is another good example, since he lived as basically a hedonist during his early years (I'm using St. Augustine for both examples since I read the first 9 or 10 books of Confessions by St. Augustine (I left off around the start of the exgenesis of Genesis, but that was sort of because I was busy writing a book report on Confessions)), but what all saints have in common (or at least all true saints), is a deep relationship with God and a deep devotion to pursuing that relationship and pursuing God's will.

This also means that if we want to achieve sainthood or something comparable, we don't need to be personally spotless, nor do we need to be right all the time. We just need to try to always get closer to God and to love God with all of our hearts, minds and souls. And part of loving God is loving his people, which is to say loving all of the world. And it's tough sometimes, but if we keep trying, yes, we can become saints. And if we don't have enough time in this world to achieve that goal, well, Jesus granted us forgiveness of sins, and since sins are what keeps us from God, if we keep trying to follow Jesus' path, then He will take away all that keeps us from it.

And I think even if you don't believe directly in God, it is still possible to achieve this. The Bible says, "He who loves everyone except God, loves everyone" or something to the like (I'd put up a link but my computer's failing right now, I believe the passage is in 1 Corinthians 13 (St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13), and so if we pursue the principle of love (and not say just the happy feeling love gives us, or our desire to possess one thing or relationship), even if we might not be directly setting out to try to follow God, in our hearts we are searching for that path. And I think that in the end, for those souls who are searching for the paths of love, God will show them the way to His kingdom. Least that's my take on it (where does this leave the importance of the Church? In my book, the Church is the best guide in pursuing those paths of love, but I'll elaborate on that in a later session).

So we can all look to the saints, and their relationship with God and the strength of their love for inspiration, and we can all learn from them. And maybe, if we find the right lessons in their ways, we too can be saints one day.

Who can be the brick but I?

This song somehow feels like it resonates for me. I feel like I'm sinking slowly. But there's no brick tied to me, there's no reason I should feel this way. I think about what I need to do to get through the day, none of it seems difficult except in actually getting myself to try and I'm not sure why. I can quote the lines from the song (Brick by Ben Folds Five) but it has no reference to me, no real reference. Except I'm feeling alone, but there's no brick unless it's me.