MGMT, Religion/Mythology

MGMT
Been listening to a lot of MGMT. I wonder when I'll grow tired of them like I know will happen, but I'm thoroughly enjoying them right now.
I was listening to the song that apparently made them famous over in the UK "Time To Pretend" which I think is also CP's favorite song by them. Anyways, I really liked the following lines a lot.

I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms.
I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world.
I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home.
Yeah I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.

This song, to me, touches on growing up and leaving the security of childhood. Also realizing this song too has something to do with children/youth. My interpretation of the song might be completely wrong, but I guess there might not be a wrong answer towards interpretation. Either way, if you read the rest of the lyrics there's other lyrics about living a fast life and basically being reckless and crazy. It made me imagine those guys from the 80's who had their leisure suits on with the sleeves rolled up and they just did drugs and had a bunch of sex with whoever. I felt like the song was saying they were pretending to be happy. But who knows.

Religion/Mythology
The main bulk of this post was to be towards Religion and Mythology. It's not going to be about "Religion sucks" blah blah blah, but you'll find out.

To get started, like I mentioned before, I watched The Forbidden Kingdom with Jet Li and Jackie Chan in it and it was about The Monkey King and The Eight Immortals. I did a bit of research on The Monkey King and I found his history to be really interesting and awesome. Basically he was determined and ambitious. He wasn't born with immortality like most of the Gods but he gained it by "battling heaven and earth"

I believe he was initially 'evil' or perhaps just a rowdy ape with a terrible amount of power. There are stories of him causing trouble in the Heavenly Kingdom, where I believe the Gods lived. The Jade Emperor thought giving Wukong a title and job would help keep him in line but they gave him a shitty job (wiki says "head of the Heavenly Stables to watch over horses). Sun Wukong realized what they were doing so he rebelled and proclaimed himself "Great Sage, Equal of Heaven".

After Wukong did that and allied with demons on Earth the Jade Emperor appealed to Buddha, same Buddha who put Raijin and Fujin in their place? Buddha challenged Wukong in a bet...

"The Buddha made a bet with Wukong that he could not escape from his palm. Wukong, knowing that he could cover 108,000 li(54,000 km) in one leap, smugly agreed. He took a great leap and then flew to the end of the world in seconds. Nothing was visible except for five pillars, and Wukong surmised that he had reached the ends of Heaven. To prove his trail, he marked the pillars. Afterwards, he leaped back and landed in Buddha's palm. There, he was surprised to find that the five "pillars" he had found were in fact the five fingers of the Buddha's hand. When Wukong tried to escape, Buddha turned his hand into a mountain. Before Wukong could shrug it off, Buddha sealed him there using a strip of paper with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum written thereon in gold letters, and Wukong remained imprisoned for five centuries."

He was later released from imprisonment because Guan Yin (a Taoist Immortal) was searching for disciples to protect a pilgrim who needed to travel to India to retreive Buddhist Sutras. This was the Journey to the West, which I believe Lane has in graphic novel form and I'd like to borrow it!

That took a lot longer to explain then I thought.

As a lot of you might know, I'm not religious. I don't know much about it. People who do, I have a question. Does Christianity have epic tales of hero's and demons? It's a legitimate question. The only real tales I know of are Noah's Arc, Jesus' crucifixion (of you want to include that), The Moses Adventures! (Leading slaves through the Red Sea and the Ten Commandments), all of these to me are not 'cool' or epic (that's what we say, right?). Maybe it's because the way I was raised and maybe I need war and violence for something to be awesome, but I feel like there are much better religion/mythology then Christianity in terms of stories, not religious ideals and whatnot. Also, have we classified Greek/Roman/Japanese/Chinese/etc. religion as mythology or has it always been mythology? Could I attempt to saying Christianity is simply mythology as well? I'm not sure what the requirements for mythology are.

I suppose I'm full of questions. Also, found some pretty cool pictures.

Well I found one cool picture. This second one is spooky!

Look Up and Follow The Stars!

This day will probably be one of those days where in the middle of work I'll randomly open up Notepad and blog about whatever I'm thinking about.

I'm sure my blogging is heavily influenced by the music I listen to. Last time I had a flurry of I believe I was listening to Ben Folds a bunch. Now it's The Management's (MGMT) songs "The Youth" and "Kids". Until I put them next to each other I didn't realize they had a common theme.

Either way, they're both really good songs in my opinion and they make me feel sort of nostalgic about nothing in particular and also maybe enlightened. But of course, I'm not sure what it feels like to be enlightened. I'd imagine it felt something like this? Who knows.

I feel very productive today too because there are clients that need help and I have tasks I need to get done. I am getting them done too so in between I find time to type a couple sentences about whatever is going through my mind.

I'm pretty excited to each lunch. Doe and I have been buying these cheap meals from Market Basket. They're a dollar a box and they're usually filled with vegetables. It makes me feel healthy I guess just eating vegetables. I think they're pretty high in sodium, but my mom said I'd live. I'd like to start eating better, and I think I have. Last week due to money shortage I primarily ate soup for lunch - well now that I recall, due to money shortage I also went to KFC a lot for cheap meals. Either way, for the most part I'm doing all right. I think I'll be trying to stick to water again. Last night I did have a dream where I was drinking Pepsi. I wasn't upset about it, but I remember drinking the last drops and hiding the bottle away from anyone who might see me drinking it.

Soda has a firm grasp around my mouth and mind. There's something about the carbonation and taste that I really enjoy. But I'm going to stop again. Not because I want to lose weight (it honestly didn't do anything for me) but because the stomach pains and constant throat gas (I can't burp) was really harsh and not worth the taste. I also know it's not the carbonation that gives me these issues because it happens when I drink fruit punch and iced tea as well. Pure water is the way to go.

I really want a new video camera/camcorder. One that will work on Vista. I've probably written this before, but that's the only thing stopping me from making more videos. I no longer care to use my old computer and because of this I can't get my laptop to recognize my outdated camera. Someday it'll happen though.

This just in:
A developer just walked into my office with Ginny the accountant. I forgot his name already, I want to say Peter. Either way, looks like a nice average guy who quite possibly experiments with drugs or some sort of substance abuse. I'm not saying he looks creepy or anything, but he had this look. Sort of wide-eyed and alert. He looks like a nice guy but when I went to shake his hand it was damp, soft and a bit cold. I'm sure he didn't think my hand was pleasant either, it being dry, callused, and a little warm. He also grabbed my hand in a sideways manner, in a way I couldn't fully apply my full gripping strength. He didn't grip very hard and I felt like he had the advantage in hand positioning anyways. It was a terrible hand shake and I hope he doesn't think I'm a homo for it, since I think he's sort of a homo about it.

I hope to god no coworkers ever read this.

I'm pretty curious to know who actually reads this, if anyone, outside of my circle of friends.

If you do, let it be known. Maybe it'll inspire me to write about things with relevance.

Mostly Media

Good morning.

It's Tuesday but I guess because of Columbus Day, it's kinda like Monday.

So the weekend was basically really eventful and I'm glad it happened. I look forward to visiting up there again in the future, especially if Doe were to come up. I felt bad that she couldn't and it might be hard getting her up there since she works on Saturdays. But that will work itself out.

So yesterday I went to Burlington with Ryan and Doe to a bookstore but it happens they are closed every Monday. I decided since we were in Burlington we'd check out the Spirit store across the mall. I didn't exactly know where it was but I remember someone said it was across the mall. Ryan helped out by saying maybe it's in the Tower Record building and that made sense to me. So we went there and it turns out the Tower Record building is some sort of make-up store. I drove out of the parking lot and proceeded to drive around the mall until I found out where the store was. But when we passed the Newbury Comics/Tower Record lot again we found the Spirit store was where this old sports store was a while back. I had to drive around in circles to get back to it.

After getting into the store I found everything was as over-priced and sort of lame as I remembered. Masks, costumes, wigs and whatever little gadgets you could find littered the ground like I remembered from working at Spencer's. I started to wonder if the people who worked here had to recover the store at the end of the night, but I feel like they didn't just because it didn't look like it. I wouldn't want to recover if it was just going to get destroyed again and it seemed like people managed just fine by digging through a pile of masks on the ground. I just walked around, sometimes with Doe, sometimes with Ryan and sometimes with both. I was looking for ideas for what I'd like to be for Halloween because I felt like doing something this year. I still don't think I will because I couldn't find anything worth the money and I didn't think of anything interesting. Ryan did find a hat that is typically worn by Asians. Rice hat? Asian Hat? Bamboo hat? It had no price on it, but I actually liked it a lot and decided to buy it. I wouldn't have bought it though if Doe didn't also want to pick up some eye lashes.

When I got up to the register I saw Melinda. A little Asian girl who I met one day when I was hanging out with my other two friends Steph and Lina. I met Melinda quite recently so I remembered her instantly. I probably would have remembered her anyways since she was pretty outrageous when we hung out. Running around, telling stories to Lina and Steph that I found pretty funny in both subject and her way of telling them. She was just pretty outgoing and I thought it was cool. She seemed a bit more reserved yesterday and I assume it was from being at work.

So when I went to pay for the hat, I said hi to her and joked to her and the two guys she worked with about the hat. There was no price tag so they had to search for the price. They had a price book and they had to find out what the hat was called. They asked Melinda and she said "Asian Hat?" they looked around and found it wasn't called that. I think it ended up being called a Chinese bamboo hat? Either way it was good encounter/laugh at the Spirit store.

Later Doe and I watched two movies.
We finished the Forbidden Kingdom because we fell asleep the night before and then we watched Penelope.


Spoilers/Review
The Forbidden Kingdom follows some noob from South Boston who gets thrown back into History/Mythology after getting his hands onto the Monkey Kings Staff. I don't know how accurate the Mythology in the movie is, but I'm going to research it because I really like what the supposed lore was about. The Monkey King and the 8 Immortals. It sounds cool to me, but I'll find out what it's really about later.

Anyways, so this Kid Jason needs to get the Monkey King's staff back to the Monkey King to free him and then The Monkey King and defeat some evil Jade Warlord who took over after the Jade Emperor left to meditate for like 500 years.

I guess I won't spoil anything, but I guess I still might in telling you what I thought about it. But it wasn't a great movie so if I spoil it for you, you wouldn't be missing much.

Anyways, there was a plenty of wire-fu in this movie, which is sort of bad considering I used to like how Jackie Chan used to do all his own real stunts. But he is really old now, so I shouldn't be expecting him to be doing such things. The gimmick of the movie was the union of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, two huge kung-fu movie icons. They only fought once but I'll say their kung-fu is strong. In their fight there wasn't TOO much wire-fu, but maybe just the right amount. The kung-fu was cool in the movie, as cool as kung-fu is. But as always the story kind of sucked. But thinking back all kung-fu movies never really had great stories and you'd always watch them for the fights.

There were a lot of things bad with this movie. The main character was a white kid with no kung-fu but he learned some from Chan and Li throughout the movie with funny montages. I'm glad they didn't give this kid a terrible typical Boston accident because they probably would have made this movie unwatchable. Anyways, when the kid got to old china he obviously spoke English. At first, all the Chinese only spoke Chinese. But when Jackie Chan came along he spoke English along with every other Asian that the white kid came in contact with. At first I thought it was some magic power the kid got where he could understand Chinese, but it was in fact just them speaking in English. I thought it was stupid.

Penelope was a dramedy, more of a comedy but there was still the drama. It's about a girl who is cursed with a pig nose and pig ears (but the ears don't really come into play) and to be honest, Christina Richi didn't look half bad with a pig nose. It's a happy ending.

Music
I've recently started listening to MGMT and Vampire Weekend. I'm sure it's a phase but it's a happy, nice feeling phase.

I'll be back again soon.

Weekend Summary

This long weekend is over and it was a pretty eventful one.

Friday evening we left for Montreal, Canada to meet Lauren, Lane, Jim and CP. I am just realizing the majority of the readers know this so I'll cut out that bullshit.

It was a five hour drive and I was surprised CP did it as often as he did, especially alone. I tried thinking of things I would do for five hours on the road. I couldn't think of anything fun.

Anyways, when we got to the outskirts of Montreal I saw the city skyline all lit up in the night. It wasn't very impressive I guess. It just looked like Boston's to me. I can only imagine a skyline being impressive if it had something impressive. I guess that's the best way to put it. Montreal had no Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty (although I guess you wouldn't consider that a part of the skyline). It was just an ordinary city skyline with a bunch of buildings with their lights on.

When we arrived it was midnight I think. I wasn't very tired because I was pretty excited to be somewhere new. When we met up with everyone we went to get some food. We when to some street that was full of clubs and assholes who littered the streets. I call them assholes only because they were different then me and I don't really even know if they were assholes. I just didn't like the scene. Techno beats blaring out of various clubs, drunks stumbling from here to there and long lines of chain smoking trendy people. Short skirts and popped collars basically.

We ended up at this place that was basically fast food but maybe a little better because they were actually cooking things. They handled the food pretty harshly with ungloved hands, spilling food and shoveling back onto their intended plates. They spoke to me in french which obviously threw me off a little bit. The lines were long so the cashier didn't have much patience in asking me three times about something I still don't even know what he was talking about. I just guessed yes on the 3rd time. First I assumed he wanted to know what drink I wanted and second I asked him What?

After leaving there I had a stomach from probably eating too fast and drinking sprite. It was this night I remembered one of the reasons I stopped drinking soda. Soda usually makes my stomach feel terribly bloated! It also didn't help I had to simply take a dump. Oh well. I told myself soda is taking a break again for a while.

We walked around Montreal until maybe 3am when we decided to go back to Lauren's apartment. I think it was three. Stayed up with Jim and Ryan until five playing Street Fighter then I fell asleep.

Saturday everyone went out for another walk around the city. Visiting places I don't care to remember. Not that they were bad experiences, I just don't remember what they were called or care if I knew them or not. Anyways, we visited a lot of shops and walked a lot just looking and talking and having a good time. Although I don't remember many names I really liked the city.

I know everyone probably thought the same thing but many of the women there were beautiful! Compared to our city anyways.

I'm peacing for now.

More Mundane

Hey readers whoever you may be, I'm sitting here at 12:30 with two kittens/cats (They're both happily making the transition into adolescent cats but they're still small enough to be called kittens) sleeping in my lap with an old episode of the Venture Brothers running in the background. I haven't posted anything in a little while and I'd like to so here I am doing just that.

Good News!
My mother is talking to Doe and myself again. Just as randomly as she got mad at us she was talking to me like nothing had ever happened. It's sort of weird but I guess it's always how my mother operates. My mom and I don't hug or kiss each other on the cheeks like I see happen a lot in other families. I don't really mind but it's weird when I have to hug and kiss any in-laws. Not that I don't want to do that little transaction but it is a bit out of the norm for me. Either way, she's not upset anymore and that's never a bad thing.

Today...
I had to train someone in the generally useless program I specialize in at work. This guy was of Hispanic descent I think and he clearly didn't care what I was talking about and I assume he'll be fired soon after he gets back to Texas and his company realizes he paid no attention to any of the training he received from me and my coworkers. I felt comfortable training him though, I think it's because he didn't care as much as I did. Or maybe it's because I'm getting less awkward when it comes to speaking with strangers. I hope it's the less awkward option.

Future
One of the major things I look forward to in the far future is moving out. Being able to live in a house without any restrictions other then my own seems so fun and new. I just wonder who will be involved and where we'll be. I'm sure it'll be fun and as ignorant as I'm being I can't see anything going wrong haha.

I know I don't have the voice or the annunciation skills, but being a voice actor would be sweet. I always have mini-fantasies of voice acting in something stupid. I'm not sure why. Personally I hear a lisp whenever I playback audio of myself. Everyone claims it's not there, but I hear it. I also mumble like it's my job. Often when I meet new people I have to repeat myself over and over. Only people who've known me for a while can really hear what I'm saying. When I talk to new people I also trail off into silence a lot about nothing in particular. Only some have called me out on it. Usually in a mocking manner but I don't kur. I'm not going anywhere with this.

I guess that's all I'm blabbering about tonight!

Canada this weekend.

Really Tired Baby

I just wanted to type I guess. I'm a really tired baby and I don't look forward to going to work tomorrow.

Things are still looking bleak at home and it sort of has me caught in this weird feeling. I can go out and having a good time with Doe and our friends but I guess I always coming back to what the situation is at home.

My mother is still ignoring me. She's actually responded to Doe a couple of times, but still not to me. This just shows that it is actually something I did. Doe narrowed it down to me 'huffing and puffing' about helping my mom remove the AC from the window last Sunday. This might be true because last time this happened it was because I gave my mother attitude when I was asked for electric bill money.

In my defense I usually reciprocate the emotions sent towards me. So last Sunday when my mom asked for help she was unpleasant to begin with. This put me in a bad mood because I felt like she was mad at me for not helping her without her asking even though I was in bed and told her to get me when she wanted to get the thing out of the window.

Last incident when I gave her attitude about money was probably because I was in a bad mood to begin with and I didn't want to think about money. I just don't like it when my mother needs to explain to me why she needs X amount of dollars. I just want to give her the money and be done with it.

I could easily be at fault. But no matter how wrong I could be it doesn't mean I should be ignored and treated like this.

I've been wishing for money lately.

Augh, Good Grief

I am concerned!

About my cats anyways.

Doe and I might be thinking of running away to her parents basement for the time being until Ryan, Lane and whoever else is in for moving out, can move out.

Like I've told some, my mother is still ignoring us for some reason. When we got home last night I heard her talking on the phone in her room. She sounded fine I suppose. I figured she was talking to my sister or maybe my white grand mother, I guess maybe even Duc. I didn't hear what she was saying as I walked by her room but she sounded normal. I knew she wasn't gossiping or complaining about Doe and I at least I don't think she was. She told me once that she can't complain to them because they don't seem to care. Again, I've said this to some already and I guess a lot of this might have been heard before, but for some reason she seems to treat me the worst. Of course, that's really bold to say that and a little dramatic. She puts up with a lot of crap from my brother and sister though and they don't ever seem to get her quite as mad as I make her.

My brother is constantly spending hundreds of dollars on his car putting a lot of his expenses on my mother credit card. He pays her back of course but she complains to me about how he's crazy and just spends too much money. But I guess he's making a lot of money now at his new job, I believe almost as much as my mother.

My sister can get really cold to my mother as well as really demanding, wether it be for rides, sometimes materials for whatever she's doing and my sister ignores her sometimes when she's preoccupied on the computer or watching tv. My sister also did less to help out. My sister never had to do dishes or had to vacuum around the house, my mother just never asked her. I might sound bitter towards this but I'm really not. It just goes back to my mom and how she for some reason expects so much from me in terms of chores. I just want to vacuum my room when it needs vacuuming or clean up my dishes when I use them. I don't want to take of a whole house when I'm only using 25% of it. I sound selfish and sort of lazy, but I pay for whatever my mother askes me to pay for. I give her 80% of basically every pay check.

I can get neglagant towards my mother as well sometimes. Usually when I'm playing a video game, which is no excuse. My mother is rather patient most of the time. But she can have radical mood swings.

Maybe she treats me the same as Stacey and Duc. I've been told I'm too sensitive many times and I'm sure I am, which is obviously a bad thing. My brother and sister and usually pretty passive when my mom gets mad I guess. They either ignore her or in my brother's case just gives her some back talk and she doesn't seem to do anything about it.

I almost forgot what started this post, my cats.

I feel bad for them. If say Doe and I do relocate to her parents house we'd get this room in her basement for ourselves. But our cats will have to stay in this one room because their are other cats who live in the house and one of them isn't very friendly when it comes to other cats. This room is a lot larger then the bathroom Noa and Konrad had to be kept in, but I still like letting my cats roam. Especially Bradley who I feel likes his time alone away from the other two.

Also, as much as my mother can be a bitch, I don't want her to be completely alone and I would like to leave Bradley at home because my mom loves him. But I hate thinking about Bradley not having two little buddies to hang out with. I don't want any of my cats to be separated but to not be an asshole I think I'll have to, but then I think I'm being an asshole to Bradley. This is my crazy cat lady speaking I believe too. Since any 'normal' person wouldn't be nearly as concerned with a cats feelings as I am. Not even Doe is as concerned about them as I am. Which isn't saying she doesn't care about them, I just care about them too much. I'm not sure why. Either way, it's going to be rough with whatever happens. It looks like I might have to leave Bradley with her because thinking of my mom on her couch watching tv on a saturday afternoon with absolutely no one in the entire house makes me feel really bad.