A Procrastinator’s Musings

My mum forwarded me this. I’ve quoted the whole thing below.

Most of us are familiar with the idea of keeping it real and have an intuitive sense about what that means. People who keep it real don’t hide behind a mask to keep themselves safe from their fear of how they might be perceived. They don’t present a false self in order to appear more perfect, more powerful, or more independent. People who keep it real present themselves as they truly are, the good parts and the parts most of us would rather hide, sharing their full selves with the people who are lucky enough to know them.

Being real in this way is not an easy thing to do as we live in a culture that often shows us images of physical and material perfection. As a result, we all want to look younger, thinner, wealthier, and more successful. We are rewarded externally when we succeed at this masquerade, but people who are real remind us that, internally, we suffer. Whenever we feel that who we are is not enough and that we need to be bigger, better, or more exciting, we send a message to ourselves that we are not enough. Meanwhile, people who are not trying to be something more than they are walk into a room and bring a feeling of ease, humor, and warmth with them. They acknowledge their wrinkles and laugh at their personal eccentricities without putting themselves down.

People like this inspire us to let go of our own defenses and relax for a moment in the truth of who we really are. In their presence, we feel safe enough to take off our masks and experience the freedom of not hiding behind a barrier. Those of us who were lucky enough to have a parent who was able to keep it real may find it easier to be that way ourselves. The rest of us may have to work a little harder to let go of our pretenses and share the beauty and humor of our real selves. Our reward for taking such a risk is that as we do, we will attract and inspire others, giving them the permission to be real too.

I strive to keep it real as much as I can.

I wrote an editorial in The Growling Wolverine at the end of junior year. Today, something someone said reminded me of it, and I felt it might be an opportune time to look back at it.

Social relationships are inherently biased towards chaos and confusion. As citizens of a modern civilized society – as teenagers in a predominantly social high school environment – we get entangled in a larger web of social relationships every single day. New friendships are formed and fresh alliances established, but also old connections are replaced and opponents recognized. Ultimately, the root of all social turmoil is the human desire to feel accepted, to feel involved, and to feel loved. This innate human tendency – the necessity of human beings to have a sense of belonging – can manifest itself in a variety of ways, many of which result in little other than “high school drama.”

High school is really the first time in life where an individual become mature enough to form a deep, meaningful relationship. Usually, this relationship takes on the form of a best friend, oftentimes a person that the individual has known for many years – since middle school, since elementary school, and sometimes since the day they were born. However, just as high school produces the perfect environment to develop a friendship that goes beyond the scope of sharing ice cream and gossip, it also has an uncanny ability to enable individuals to turn a blind eye towards people that have stood by them through every step of life, for longer than they can remember themselves. The high school social web has a tendency to attract people to others of a different mentality, who are seemingly able to get more out of life, regardless of the far greater value of the friends they are leaving behind. As impossible as this sounds, it is part and parcel of teenage life. Subtly, but surely, friendships are displaced. Old friends – the ones who identify you for the person you are – are often left behind in favor of the “friend of the month.”

But, at least from where I stand, the greatest evil of the high school experience is the clique. The clique is a lethal weapon. The clique isolates, the clique unites. Try to simultaneously participate in two, and you will become the new object of competition. While this feeling of being a desired companion is extremely satisfying as far as ego-stroking is involved, it inevitably leads towards the deterioration of social relationships. Don’t get me wrong here – I am certainly not supporting the isolation of each individual clique. What I rather ask is: why the clique? High school students should certainly be mature enough to be able to distinguish their best friends from their acquaintances. Then what is the need to separate a certain group of people from the larger part of society? What purpose does this serve besides fractionalizing friendships and creating arbitrary boundaries? My answer stands firm: absolutely none. Take friendships as they come and accept friends for the people they are – don’t choose new friends as a ticket into that group you really want to hang out with.

There is one social institution that, more than anything, makes me laugh. This institution in question is the high school couple. It is not so much the idea of the high school couple that induces the laughter in me, but rather the ideal it represents for a typical teenager. The idea of someone in your life – someone that shares a more intimate bond with you than anybody else – makes perfect sense. It is the perfect solution to the inherent human desire to feel loved. However, the perception of a high school relationship has to be perceived in practical terms. A high school relationship is where we first explore the boundaries between friendship and the next step. Therefore, it is entirely foolhardy and downright pathetic to assume that your first relationship is the love of your life. Every day, I see people invested completely in their special someone – walking to class together, eating together, and spending all their time…together. While it’s a great sensation to feel loved all the time, spare a thought for your friends. Spare a thought for those who have chosen your company as their friend, as their confidante, as their support through the high school life. Spare a thought for the ones you have spent countless months, if not years, with. I fail to understand how one can perceive their new “love life” to be completely superior and worth sacrificing the friendships they have built over multiple weeks, months, years, classes, and schools. A high school relationship, one with a “special someone,” is certainly welcoming, but remain grounded. Just don’t forget that it’s very, very unlikely that this person will be with you for the rest of your life, whereas there’s a good chance that you will be on the phone with your best friend from high school when you decide to get married.

I have to admit that the tone of this article has sounded rather cynical and negative. More than anything, this has been a response to what I witness around me every day. I am not trying to suggest that social relationships are impossible, and that you should give up trying. Neither am I saying that new friends aren’t worth meeting. What I am trying to say is that true friendships are something we build over time, with effort, with dedication, and with a common desire to feel loved. Hanging out with new people is okay, as long as you are not doing it simply because their activities of choice seem more risqué. Starting a relationship – logically on a higher step than friendship – is also okay, as long as you realize that there should be a balance of companionship. Meeting new people is an inherent part of the high school experience – don’t stop now. Just make sure that when you get closer to a new group of friends – friends that you truly appreciate for the people that they are – just take the opportunity to glance back. Make sure you didn’t leave anybody behind.

I swear that this is a real Craigslist post:

Knock knock

Oh hi, how’s it going? It’s me! Every girl ever. I’m really looking forward to this date. I’m not nearly as attractive as you remember me being because when we met the bar was dark and you were drunk. Come on in.

Let’s start off with the unavoidable tour of my incredibly typical post-college-girl apartment. You’ll notice that I went ahead and purchased everything that Ikea and Pier 1 have ever produced. There’s my decorative birdcage over there even though I don’t have a bird, and there’s my gay wicker basket with bamboo poles in it. I don’t know what the hell that’s thing’s all about, but I bought it.

Hey check it out, I have more candles in here than a Roman Catholic Church. Doesn’t it smell like Hazelnut!? If I were to light all of my candles at once you could see my apartment from space! I fucking love candles!

Come on into the living room.

Oh, I see you met my cat there. That’s “Freddy Paws Jr.” Why don’t you pet him and act like you like cats even though you hate cats? There you go. Oh, he took a little swing at your eye there huh? Yeah, he’ll do that. Hey, let’s check out the kitchen.

Hey look at my refrigerator. There are pictures all over it! Look at all these pictures of me and my equally vacuous friends from college! We were so crazy! You can tell we’re really good friends because our faces are all pressed up against each other like that.

And check it out, we’re holding up alcoholic beverages to the camera in every single picture. That’s to prove that we were partying. College was so fun! But of course I don’t talk to any of these girls anymore because now they’re all bitches.

Let’s go back into the hallway!

Hey, before we leave I’m going to go in the bathroom for ten minutes for some mysterious reason. Why don’t you sit awkwardly in my big, stupid, round papizan chair over there while you wait for me. It’s like you’re sitting in a hug! Be right back…

Sorry that took a half an hour, I don’t know what the hell I was doing in there. Let’s go!

Wow! Thanks for opening my car door for me! I’m totally going to blow that meaningless gesture out of proportion and delude myself into thinking that you’re a really good guy because that’s what I want to believe.

Well, here we are at the restaurant. No thanks waiter, I don’t need to see a menu, just bring me some expensive things. Hey I know, while we wait, I’ll tell you all about my unspeakably boring job. I hate my boss. He’s a jerk! I might get another job. Maybe something in pharmaceutical sales.

Now let’s talk about my family. I love my family. I want you to love my family. I want my family to love you. I want you to make love to my family! I want you to go golfing with my semi-retarded brother Travis. That would be so God damned cute!

Wow! I can’t believe I ordered all this food! I have no intention of eating any of it. No thanks waiter, we don’t need a box. Just throw it out.

Hey, I’ve got an idea, let’s go to a bar and have an after dinner drink! It’ll be great, it will be just like how we’re drinking here, only it will be louder and we’ll have to stand up. Come on!

See, isn’t this better? Oh hey, what a coincidence. Look over there! It’s a group of my friends that I knew was going to be here. Let’s go over there so that they can judge you!

Hey, I have to go to the bathroom for a half an hour again for some reason. You can stay here and talk to my unbelievably hideous friend Christine! Christine’s so ugly she scares kids! Talk to her! She has a job and a family that she wants to talk to you about too. Be right back.

I’m back! Sorry I was gone for three hours, there was a line. I want to go home now.

Well here we are at my door again. This was really fun for me and not you. You should pretend like we’re going to do it again sometime! Maybe I’ll see you at Target a few months from now and we can avoid eye contact because you never called me. Here, have this awkward goodnight kiss that’s as empty as my soul. Good night!

I know I’m a little late to the party with this post but…

Barack Obama is the Democrat Presidential Nominee!

A few snippets…

Mr. Obama reached the nomination threshold 143 years after the legal abolition of slavery and 43 years after the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In August he is expected to accept his party’s nomination 45 years to the day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I think it might help some of the stereotypical perceptions of black people,” Mr. Murray said. “You can have rappers and now you can have a president.”

The race for the Democratic nomination—”race” is hardly the right word, is it?—now feels like a quantum physics problem: How long can a body exist in a state approximating motionlessness without actually stopping?

- John Dickerson, Slate.

“At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at the given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth.”

-Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

Found this online. Hilarious!

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a [horse] named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown.

Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Source: The Page from TIME.com

The Coolidge Effect: A phenomenon whereby males exhibit high sexual performance given the introduction of new willing females.

It earned its name many years ago when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that “could copulate with hens all day long, day after day.” Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, which he did.

The President thought for a moment and then inquired, “With the same hen?”

“No, sir,” replied the farmer.

“Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge,” retorted the President.

Hahaha! They say that Coolidge was a man of few words. Well, he certainly chose the right words!

This is funny on so many different levels!

The Original MacBook Air Ad

The Parody Lenovo Thinkpad X300 Ad

Quotes from the video comments…

Commenter 1: The guys behind that should volunteer their service to a certain number of political campaigns.

Commenter 2: And pull Hillary Clinton out of a envelope?

Commenter 3: Then you could shove her back in with Bill attached.

So I was watching a UC Berkeley lecture on YouTube (don’t ask me how I ended up there). Here’s a quote by the professor:

As you can see, we’ve got a lot of different ways to organize the course. So I decided not to organize it.

I can’t wait for college!