I've been hearing a lot about different random acts of kindness that different people have been doing lately. Things like standing around in public areas complimenting the people that pass by, or more commonly assisting people on the highway. Well lately I've realized and implimented a few others that area really easy for anyone to do.

The first is, I've been doing the meeting people online thing here and there for awhile. Lately instead of asking questions about their hobbies or interests, or the usual all I say in the ice breaker is a short list of compliments. If it's their outlook on life or they vibrant color of their eyes, it doesn't matter. I try to compliment at least one in every five that I come across. So far it hasn't lead to any relationships but it has lead to some friendships and numerous notes about making their day. It's just a good feeling for everyone involved.

The last thing involves phone techsupport. I used to work the phones, so I know the pain that involves. Well what I've been doing is when I'm done talking to someone that works for a company I thank them for working for the company. It's really quick and easy and then you hang up so if you're shy it's a good option :D.

Anyway, I just wanted to make that little blurb. Buddha out.

The other day I was talking with Katie about what we should get the nephews and such. After making a short case that Thanksgiving and Christmas should just fuck right off and happen in January when I have time we started making decisions.

One idea I had was a gift for my niece. I still think it would be a great present. I can just imagine the look on her face. She'd shake the present a little bit, maybe hearing a dull thud. Then she would open the box revealing a puppy. Her little heart would just fill with joy. Her eyes would get huge and just as she starts pull it out of the box she'd noticed that it's both cold and lifeless in her little hands. Her heart of joy would spring a leak like the Hoover dam giving way and her eyes would widen with horror. As she starts screaming her mother would begin to enrage while trying to find the cause of this scene. When she realizes I gave her daughter a dead puppy for Christmas I would only have moments to enjoy the incident I had created before my own life was robbed and I lay next to the puppy in similar fashion. With my last conscious thought I would ponder the generosity of the situation. It's not ever year a little girl gets a dead puppy and a dead uncle for Christmas.

So last night I had a dream. Sadly I don't have all of the story, but what I can remember is as follows. For whatever reason there are these metal shoes (they look ancient and made of iron) and they have the power to completely control whoever wears them. Ok, now we have this large box with a small dim spot light on top of it. This box is placed between two houses that look surprisingly suburban.

Enter Sweeney stage right, following the sidewalk between the houses. The spot light (as thought with its own free will) shines on his as he walks passed. He doesn't notice his new found attention. And just as he's about to pass out of site a voice from inside the old box speaks his name clearly... "Sweeney". In the instant Sweeney looks and his eyes are drawn into the spot light, you know something foul is afoot, because as though being pulled by magnets Sweeney's feet move forward out from under him, tward the box. With no legs to hold him, he falls to the ground while his feet, still sliding, drag him around the back of the box, where for the first time you notice there is about a one foot gap where an extra board aught to be. Sweeneys feet then line him up and though flailing, Sweeney is dragged though the gap into the box. As the camera very subtly pans out then fades to black you are left to wonder what just happened her.

The next scene shows us little, but it's enough. Focusing on a small child's chair you notice what is presumably the back patio door open. Nearly skipping out of the door with leash in hand is some character you never see above the waste. Nothing seems out of place as this young female leaves her home... until while turning around following her, the box comes into view and some errie music plays. Following her over to the box we see her lean up against the box while letting the leash unfold. The camera follows the leash as it falls, bringing into view the metal shoes and the delinquent feet from earlier seemingly cowered in the corner. A sweet little southern voice then says, "Put on the shoes". Fast cut to black. Roll credits.

Grown apart

It’s funny how in a few short months Tiger and I have gone from her writing this about me.

Raindrops falling everywhere
Yet not one makes a sound
How can exist such a man of trust
With words oh so profound?

I never dreamed this man could be
But (?) him tonight
The beauty of thought and timeless flaws
Captured and blurred my sight.

It's freezing outside - I don't feel a thing
I just long for him to say
Come closer to me, I'll comfort you
Through every night and day.

Flowers by the creek, so dear
That bring a girl to cry
What am I thinking, what do I do?
I feel as I could die.

What is it about a flower
That brings a girl to tears
I promised I would never trust
Not once in al my years

And then he comes into my life
And my promises come crashing down
Tears like raindrops beading upon
The rough tormented ground

I've fallen for the one I can't have
That leaves flowers by the creek
It's hard to watch him love somebody else
It gets harder and harder each week


To this following conversation.

Buddha: hola
Tiger: seriously
Tiger: i deleted you
Buddha: ok... i'll leave you be... I just seeing what u were up to
Tiger: why do you care..you're too good for me, remember? I thought we had the discussion about how i hold a grudge longer than the person that the grudge is held against can breathe
Buddha: seems to me we'll need to atleast get to the level of being civil to eachother, for jenkins sake
Tiger: we will get along when jinx is around....i'm not going to pretend to like you when he isnt, though. For example, movie night. I'll be civil around you..but that doesnt mean i have to like you at the time. I'll pretend to make conversation and acknowledge that you're in the room--but when it's just us two then no possible way. After the way you treated me and the things you've said, you dont deserve any address from me
Budha: alright... good night then
Tiger: goodnight


It makes me wonder if any of it could have been avoided. Makes me think despite it all, this was a mistake. I know now this chapter is closed in my life. Never again will we be so much a friends. Such a cold heart, how did I ever feel warmth?

With finals week looming, many of you are by now no doubt having dreams of sugar plums; it’s really too bad the true meaning of this holiday more than any other has been bled from it. This year stores were in the “Christmas Spirit” sooner than usual; Thanksgiving had not even come to pass before Jingle House Rock and a slew of other chipper, mind numbing tunes began to “enlighten” your shopping experience. Black Friday used to be the unofficial opener to the Christmas shopping season. What happened? Likely, the stores thought their gerbil-minded customers would start shopping when they were told to and that by giving them more time they would spend more money. I hope for once we don’t take the cue from our corporate masters and instead give them a lowered profit margin. The sooner we stop letting ourselves be puppets the better. Nothing good ever came from having somebody else’s hand… well you know where.

Disgustingly unseasonable weather this year has made a snow-less Christmas a very real possibility. The unfortunate side effects of this are continued yard maintenance and lowered traffic related deaths. On our very own campus much of the grass is still green. GREEN!!! You should have to move a foot of snow to see the dead and decrepit grass, not walk outside in shorts and a tee shirt to see the green grass. In my lifetime it has been unusual to see a snow-less Halloween, unheard of to have a snow-less Thanksgiving, and hell would freeze over before anyone would even think about a snow-less Christmas… which would explain where all our weather went. I for one want a blizzard. The kind that makes you thankful to have a roof over your head. The kind that makes you wonder if you have enough food to last it out. We’ve gotten soft and need to remember we’re only living here by the good graces of Mother Nature and at any moment she can rip that all away from us.

With Christmas just around the corner many home owners have started up that age old tradition, Christmas decorations. What started as a way to celebrate the season has, like so many things, been perverted into a competition pitting neighbor against neighbor in what turns into a ruthless battle in many suburban neighborhoods. Though it’s seen in a softer light in many TV sitcoms, these competitions bring out the worst in people. Envy, subterfuge, and sabotage are all common place here. No less, this all happens during a time of the year that celebrates the messiah. What a slap in the face to Christians the world over. Try as it may, religion will never truly kill the animal that rages inside each and every one of us. That’s just human nature, but to freely let it rage, that’s the real sin.

Perhaps our increased selfishness and greed has finally reached a level to enrage the gods and as such we are being punished. Maybe they finally found a way to put a price on the weather and we just haven’t earned enough punches in our frequent shopper card to get one free snowy day. Perhaps the collective unconscious wants the snow to stay in Canada. It all just leaves me to wonder, what ever happened to the white Christmas? Guess it just wasn’t politically correct.

In an effort to free myself of this rut I’ve been in I’m changing; shacking things up a bit. I’m sleeping differently, and bare a different title. Hopefully I can keep off smoking, and keep on dieting. In time I’ll know if any of this change was for the better. Two weeks time should do. By then I’ll either have found a sweet taste of change, or the stale taste of that which has since been. Either way, I have a week of school left, a manual to finish, two presentations to give, and who knows what else for last minute class stuffs. I know you’re probably thinking such a hectic time is a bad time to try and insight change. Maybe I just couldn’t take it anymore, or maybe I was hoping to do myself in this semester what with the 16 credits and 5 jobs… and this is just a last ditch effort. Whatever the case may be, the ball is set in motion and I intend to put in effort enough to see it through to a worthy end. I’m not about to carry on as though nothing has happened.

Standing beneath the DSU space needle, its buzz like ringing in my ears, I can’t help but think of life as a wisp of smoke taken in by a breath of life while the fire burns hotter, then expelled into this world dancing a path through the air until it slowly fades away leaving hardly but the faintest trace. I earn for the blanket of winter to come and quiet my mind and slow my days. A year spent awake, I want the rest she will bring. I want for her to take this addiction away, and replace it with a winter, the likes of which we haven’t seen for some time. Only eleven more days before Halloween and I’ll be quite let down if I can’t curl up with her blanket on that night.

Relationships are complicated. No one person has all the answers. Pythagoras knew a lot about triangle, but encyclopedias could be written on what he left out. What an interesting web we weave, and how delicately it waves in the wind. A pin-stripped booklet, I’d rather only us two knew, has been shared. The careful phrases etched upon parchment, are not for your eyes. Though I don’t know why they are for mine, a phrase stands out. “If anyone could get to her, I knew it would be you.” I wish I knew more about this dynamic, but for now I feel she hasn’t yet learned what I have learned. I can see the youth in her eyes, though her hands tell another tale. I wish I could get a sign to tell me if the path I’m on is the right one to follow. “I just wanted to hear your voice,” She said tonight. Oh how She makes me glow. Before this I felt alone. Puzzlingly, unexplainably alone. In a room of friends, I felt a wall between us. But with her phrase, She made the world a better place. Perhaps that is my sign. How complete She makes me feel. And though she feels comfortable with me, sometimes I can see a wanting for something more. Oh Pythagoras, where’s your inspired solution to this? Physically I want to, but emotionally I can’t. Add it to my list of contradictions, but for now She has my heart so she never can.

You kids have no idea what real problems are! Compared to your sheltered high school lives I'm sure you're boyfriend leaving for months to be in the military seems like the end of the world. Truth is, there are much bigger problems with the world, and when you keep a mindset like that you'll never be able to help any of them. The best you could ever really hope for is to make denotations to the Red Cross to make yourself think you're saving the world. It's just pathetic. But I keep talking to you. I'm convinced one day you'll wake up and say, "I need to grow up. I spend far too much of my day worrying about if my team will be making it to playoffs, or who Jamie is going to the prom with. It’s about damn time that I stop being blinded by popular media and actually form my own opinion for once. No longer will I take the cheap and quick way out. Food doesn’t come from boxes, it comes from the earth. Though it means a little extra time to prepare, isn’t the quality and health benefits worth it? Chickens don’t have nuggets, and nuggets are barely chicken! Today, I stand on my soap box and gather my brethren to stand beside me so that together we may tear down our corporate masters, replacing them with the purity of old."

I’ve noticed over the past months that the less I do as my masters would have me do, the healthier I become. They would like for me to drive everywhere I go, even if it’s just across campus, while picking up a value meal on my way. Not unlike a child that has planted a tree, they will wait patiently, in their bright shirts wearing plastic smiles, as they watch me grow. Before long, I become dependent on the high amounts of fat and sugar that lace every starchy bun and greasy patty. No longer can I walk, for my blood has grown so full of cholesterol; it may as well be served up to the next faithful patron as an Extra Thick Strawberry Shake. Though the price of petrol keeps rising, I find myself bending over so that they may dig in a little deeper. “Three dollars a gallon isn’t that bad,” we’ll say to put our minds at ease like a lost balloon, it just keeps going up. Years from now, when flex-fuel and hybrids are the norm, we’ll find ourselves paying nearly ten dollars a gallon, but we’ll justify it by saying we’re paying the same amount as we used to, to travel the same distance. We’ll all have personal jet packs, not to fly though, just to carry us around as a race that once stood strong, now looks more likely to roll back down into the primordial ooze from which it came.

When this day comes, we’ll have no one to thank but ourselves. Those that replace us will see that we could have prevented it. We had the technology to save ourselves, but when push came to shove we found we didn’t have a ticket to the fight. So we float back to the couch and watch what should have been a brawl for supremacy turn into yet another merger. We sit back, idly, as the world is consumed by the corporations, then the corporations consumed by each other, until only one remains. We realize monopoly is only a game, as we are systematically bar coded like boxes of Cheerios. It was world domination they were after all along. No longer free in any manner, our only escape will be our minds, until they find a way to conquer that too. I guess all we can hope for is that the robots win out in the end; at least they can’t be evil.

I’ve been reading some quotes lately and some of them have been fitting a little too well. Most of all is "I love you not because of who you are but because of who I am when I'm with you." I’ve always been like a counter balance in my relationships. With 1k, I dropped a lot of shyness, and really knew I had to be the one to take command, to counter her. Buggy was mildly outgoing, financially a wreck. So I became less outgoing, and financially stable. But now with She, I find I don’t have to change myself at all to find the balance. It just exists between us. Maybe that’s why I love her, because I can be with her without having to change myself. I’ve been reading some quotes lately and some of them have been fitting a little too well. Most of all is "I love you not because of who you are but because of who I am when I'm with you." I’ve always been like a counter balance in my relationships. With 1k, I dropped a lot of shyness, and really knew I had to be the one to take command, to counter her. Buggy was mildly outgoing, financially a wreck. So I became less outgoing, and financially stable. But now with She, I find I don’t have to change myself at all to find the balance. It just exists between us. Maybe that’s why I love her, because I can be with her without having to change myself.