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| Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans
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| What do we have to be proud of? Are we proud of our abilities? Are we proud of our country? Are we proud of our jobs? Of our families? Friends?
And where does pride come from? Does it come from being inspired by extraordinary actions or characteristics? Like the pride of living in a city with a championship basketball team. Or can we have pride in things simply because we share a certain connection with them. Like the pride of living in a city with a so-so basketball team, but believing in them because they're You're team.
I think that pride comes from within. You have to be proud of yourself, or else who else would be? People talk a lot about what you should be proud of: A nice house, cool cars, having lots of money and all the babes, being an all around "winner"; but if you can't be proud of yourself, in the ways that matter to you, then what's the point.
Right? I mean, I just set up my room, and I think it looks bad ass, and probably a lot of people wouldn't care as much as I do, because they might have seen other rooms that they might have thought were way nicer. But this is my room, and it's Sic. Another example: I've been play tennis for a long time, and i'm not the best at it, but it's always been something that I've loved doing, and something that i've believed in and was always important to me. The way I play is important to me, if not to anyone else.
And I think that that's the kind of pride people should have. They shouldn't be embarrassed to be themselves. Right? No one should be embarrassed to play tennis, because they think they're a bad tennis player. If you do that, then you miss out on a lot of fun, and that would be a shame.
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| Every time I log on to Firefox, it asks me if I want to start a new session or restore the old one. Usually, the common sense answer is," nah, I have the old session, it might have some cool websites that I was already looking at, it probably already has my gmail loaded up, why would I want to start a new one?" It's because of this: sometimes you just need to start over. You can't just look at the same websites over and over. You need to look outside the box, and try some things that maybe you haven't thought of doing, or were just too scared to do.
We spend a lot of time doing the same things over and over, because we know that this is what has worked so far. I'm not just talking about a routine, but a prison, a box. Here we have things that have worked so far, and a lot of things that haven't. Or maybe have things in our lives that used to work, but just don't anymore, and we're just too scared to let go, or change it, because we're "comfortable."
They talk about how people make decisions based on fear, but I think what they should talk more about is people making decisions based on comfort. It may seem like a lot of us cats are struggling to pay the rent, or have some food to eat, but I think that it's just as much of a struggle to find some comfort. Somewhere were you can just relax, and have fun, not have to work, or not be alone.
You spend a lot of time trying to find your comfort zone, and you spend a lot of time trying to keep it. You build a lot of assumptions about it, and when it isn't working, you try your best to keep it working.
I think that's why I look at movies a little differently now. It used to be when you didn't get a happy ending, I wouldn't like the movie that much. When I used to see the hero living happily ever after, i'd be like,"yea, that's Sweet." These days, the endings that affect me more are the ones that are a little more ambiguous. Because that's what life is, its some ambiguous shit, and when you see that on the screen, you feel that, because you can relate to it. I think my happy ending days are over
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| I think that B.F. Skinner would say that computers modify your behavior, and condition people to use them more through a means of Interval Intermittent Reinforcement. That means you never know WHEN something good might happen when you log on to your computer, so you want to log on to your computer as often as you can so that you can catch it. Gradually, a behavior psychologist might also say, the reinforcement that you get from finding good things on your computer, such as people writing on your wall, or porn, will transfer over to just being on the computer itself, and that itself becomes a reinforcing behavior, kind of like with Pavlov's Dogs.
And, i'm really gonna stop now, because this is really starting to take up a lot of time.
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| It's probably been a year since my last xanga entry.
You know why it's hard to write xanga entries? It's because all at once you're writing just for yourself and so that other people can read it. Nobody writes xanga entries just for themselves so that They can read it later, there are a million other ways to do that. Xanga is about talking to people you don't normally talk to, or saying things to people that you can't just go up and say to them. I'm sitting here writing, and thinking about who might read this, and it really isn't anyone who I talk to, or even know that well, or would want to know that well. And that last sentence brings me to my next point.
When you write on xanga, you talk so much more shit than you would in real life, either that or you deliberately limit yourself from talking more shit than you would in real life. I honestly don't know why this is. I never even use the word shit, Ever, but for some reason when i'm on xanga I just want to write like i'm in high school. What the Shit...shit, there it is again...shit.
If you think about it, the s-word really isn't a very charming word. I think if anyone really took the time to think about it and what it means, they probably wouldn't have as much fun using it. But, it fills a role. I think all swear words fill a very big role in speech, and by extension, swear word replacements play a big role in speech (frick, or fudge, or saying something like Holy Smokes). I think that when you swear, it's not so much that you're saying words, but that you are using some kind of non-verbal communication, almost like you're barking or making other kinds of dog sounds. It seems obvious if you think about it, because no one is really saying "intercourse you," or "what the feces."
So, back to my point about this xanga-rage. Yea...i mean...i know it makes Me mad. Even right now I just want to talk about my negative opinions on everything, and it's kind of a weird feeling. If I had an answer to this, it would be that, patience is the big role that is missing when you start to deal with computer related things. When you're using a computer, I think that you instantly become obsessed with efficiency and getting things done, that every little thing starts to annoy you. You can't wait for websites to load, you start to open a thousand tabs, etc. And everyday people are coming up with new ways to make computers more efficient, and it's all going to be very crazy, if it isn't already too crazy as it is.
And back to my Original point, writing for people you don't really know. Again, I blame computers for this. The computer puts potentially everyone in the world, on a little screen, so from just doing a little thing, you're already connected to hundreds of people. I think it is this potential, that gives computers life. The computer becomes a living thing, which you interact with, and that you want feed back from. It's better than a friend, because it's all your friends, potentially. But I think what it all comes to down to is that it becomes a need, like eating, or I should say, it takes over and fulfills other needs.
and this is my last most main point, out of all my points. This is kind of tangential, and I certainly blame computers for that as well.
As human beings, we have certain needs which the computer can easily fill. So if you need attention, you can go on the computer and find your buddies, or go on a forum. If you need information, you can search for it. If you just want something to do, it can search for it for you. If you need some adventure in your life, or if you want to just get away to another world, you can do that too. You can't eat food from the computer, YET, but you can fulfill a lot of basic fundamental needs, and it's from this, when you think about this that you begin to see how it's possible for some people, and some people that I know very personally, to spend so much time on the computer.
Now, why would some people prefer this to actually going out, and breathing fresh air, etc. I want to say it's because the computer can provide needs, without the discomforts that the non-computer alternatives present. So, now you can meet people, without having to look at their ugly ass face, or tell people things without having to experience any kind of social discomfort, which is the corner stone of conversation, right? The number one reason that people have a certain style of conversation, is to avoid the kind of awkwardness that comes from miscommunication. Another reason that some might prefer computers, is that it makes things quicker, much quicker, as I mentioned earlier with patience.
So to sum it all up, (and I want to let you know that I had no intention about writing any of this when I first signed on and I think it was the computer's influence that made me do this) computers can fulfill many needs, and take away certain types of discomfort. I'm not saying that it is some kind of pure evil, (and i'm not saying that it's not) but I think that people have to be careful of how they use their computers, because it can become like a type of food for some people, and like with food, if you eat too much, you're going to have problems.
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