Bitch: (adj) A woman having two or more of the following characteristics:
(1) Know-it-all-ism. Thinking you're better than everyone and literally holding your nose high relative to everyone else.
(2) Believing everyone is your friend. Inviting yourself to do things with people you dont even know, for example "I'll see you at your birthday party tommorow, okay?" (said to a person you only said 'hi' to twice).
(3) Helpless feminism. Parading around complaining about having to give birth and how guys are such sexist pigs.
(4) Dramatism. Puts yourself at the center of the spotlight by messing with your friendships.
(5) Gossipism. An offshoot of (1) in which you fill in the gaps of your knowledge with assumptions about other people. This is unique from (1) in that you actually make your lack of knowledge known, subsequently destroying the reputations of others.

I dont even need any girls. Just me and my shirt.


Thanks alot to Jon for taking these pictures. I swear, when he takes pics, he DOES it. There were about a hundred to sort through (and no way I was going to use the bandwidth to display all of them) and some of them are pretty radical, especially with the accidental blurs. Enjoy.







I couldnt get the damn meat out of the crab.


Best Picture. Ever.




I really like this picture for some reason. Captures the personality of this group of people.






Jon got a shot of my crotch. Sexy.



Hungry, and.....

Full.


The emo shot.


Moon was lovely that night.


Derek's shack.



I like the blurs in the last two pics.




Me with the party hat.




I got cut out of this picture..dammit.


Recollections:
I used to lip sync to songs on my CD Player when people were around me and they couldnt even hear the songs. Embarrassing.

Wow. wow. Derek's (birthday) party was awesome. I'm so completely glad I went.

One thing (1): I've come to love going to asian food restaraunts with my Asian friends. They force me to eat things I would otherwise never eat. My head is swimming from all the different sashimi and sushi I ate today, not to mention other less-tasty but necessary (to counteract the horrible stomach pains of a solo-sushi diet) foods like lamb and egg rolls and fruit and ice cream.

Second thing (2): I love having all-guy parties. It's cool because there's no level of nervousness or anything. You're free do say whatever you want to a certain extent. But after tonight I have to admit that I like bisexual parties more. Games like Twister and Kareoke would never be fun if you couldnt add in the "My sex is better than your sex" element.

After all this (last night and tonight), I feel like I aught to go to school tommorow. I cannot believe I have another free day. It's almost depressing, but I guess I'll just use it as a cool-down day. Maybe make some money or something.

Aside from that and the dilemna which is finding a person that I would actually like to go with to Prom, life is swell. Next weekend is the weekend I've been waiting for since Winter Break ended: the FBLA conference in San Fran. Hell, maybe I'll find a date to Prom there, but most likely not. 'Tis allright, much dancing fun and staying-up-till-3am craziness will make it a weekend worthy of graduation week (even though it isnt).


(1) Tell her boyfriend (who is also your friend) that she has it.
(2) Complain to him everyday.
(3) Run up to her and mention it and then make some kind of joke like "I just cant keep my shirt on around you so I took it off and put it in your car!"
(4) Say "Hi! Where's my shirt" everytime you see her in the school hallways.
(5) Have her boyfriend arbitrarily call her after school to ask her for the shirt.
(6) Fit it into every joke possible involving her or her boyfriend.

...the only thing is.. I havnt gotten my shirt back yet. =(


I dont really have any pictures because the dolt that is my head was rushed out the door and I forgot my camera. Fortunately, I forced a friend to take all the pictures I would have otherwise taken, so I'll post them here (along with that group pic from last night).

Recollections:
I got hooked on music in the oddest circumstances. In eighth grade I used to get really bored on the weekends. My parents were never cooperative with driving, meaning they didnt like taking me anywhere, like friends houses or anything, so I was often left to find things to do by myself.

Christmas that year my uncle gave me a MP3 CD Player and CD-RW drive, both of which for that year was on the cutting edge of technology. Unfortunately, I had no MP3's, but my to-be-cousin fortunately knew how to get them free. She introduced me to Morpheus (the first P2P network) and I started downloading tons of classical songs via dial-up. I would start 10 downloads at night and come over the next morning and they would be finished. I still have my first three CDs, it was quite amazing that I managed to accumulate roughly 600 songs over a dial-up connection, but my obsession with classical music fueled my downloading frenzy. I really liked listening to music and then playing it on my Clarinet (I was in band back then).

I soon realized that I could not just like Classical music, however, lest I be called a nerd or something. I actually needed to at least know some artists in Rock or Rap so that I could tell my friends what my favorite group was. It just so happened that just before my search for a rock band a friend showed me a music video consisting of scenes from Final Fantasy 9 (I love(d) final fantasy) set to the song "In The End" by "Lincoln Park". I searched on Morpheus for "Lincoln Park" and actually got a couple of hits. It wasnt till about a week later that I realized I was listening to "Linkin Park".

Unfortunately, The only song I initially liked was "In The End", because of the piano. Then I started riding my bike to Borders during the weekends. The trip took a good half-hour each way, and I needed something to do. So I brought my MP3 player with Linkin Park loaded up. And I listened to their songs. Even though I hated them I listened to them. And gradually they grew on me. At the end of my 8th grade year I liked even the oddchild song "High Voltage".

And for the next few years, up until the end of last summer, Linkin Park remained my favorite band of all time. It was my first, the band that latched me into rock, and will always have a place in my heart because of that.

Did Tyler's surprise birthday party today, and it was phenomenal. I must say that it's probably more of a pleasure to pull off a surprise party the way I did than it is a pleasure for the person to see all of his friends gathered for his birthday. I mean, nobody quite saw Tyler's face, but for the five minutes it took me to find a parking spot, his mouth was literally agape with surprise because he had absolutely no idea that this was going to happen.

One of the great things about Tyler and I is that we have virtually the same friends, so I found tonight extremely enjoyable. The number of shenanigans pulled and laughs had are too numerous to count so I really wont even try to divulge on all the stuff we did. All I got are a couple of measly pictures.

Oh, and I'm missing the group pic. I love group pics. I'll post it in a few days.



Frank and my gift to Tyler. You like it's wrapping job?

Tyler with his on-the-moment crafted foil-crown.


These were just random small-group pics we took. Like I said, the big one with the 18 people is yet to be had.

Jon had an "accident"

Sajil and Thanos dancing.

After dinner most of us went to get boba. We were hanging out in a parking lot at like 12:00 at night. Security gaurds were staring.


Too lazy for recollections tonight. Brain isnt working well. Tired. Bye.

First day of school on this side of the spectrum.

I was kind of looking forward to it, despite the boring veil that school has bedecked itself in. I have a new teacher, a new classroom, and in all my classes, a laid-back atmosphere. I guess I found the drive to and from school much better than school itself. I really missed driving during the cruise; so much so that the first thing I did when I got home was hop in my car and take a trip around the neighborhood. Something about engines and speed that gives me that giddiness I cant get anywhere else. I was coming home today literally laughing out loud for no reason other than my engine was hitting 4500 rpm. I probably look like such a weirdo to whoever looks into my window while I drive but hey, at least I can have fun.

Research project in English is coming up. I hate research projects. I hate them so much because they are so utterly useless. If we were assigned a yearlong research project on anything we wanted to do, it might be fun. I'd probably do nanotechnology or relativity or some subject that I'm fascinated with but I never got a chance to study, but we dont have a year to do the project (more like a month) and we really dont get to pick our topic. We're writing basically biographies on the boring lives of authors.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know there are very few people in existence who lead lives that interest me:
- Myself
- Churchill
- Napoleon
- Alexander
- maybe Atilla

That's just me, though. I like people who I respect so much that it's not even funny. People with honor and whatnot who were able to keep their integrity while doing great things. (Obviously I am not one of these people, I am on the list because I naturally have to be interested in my own life)

I was going through my 1500+ song playlist trying to pick out songs that I truly liked from ones I didnt really care for. What I was intending to do was make a playlist of about 100 songs that I really like and I would upload that list to my iRiver and put it on shuffle for a couple of days and just sift through those great songs, with many loud sing-alongs commencing.

However, I thought it'd be interesting to sift through the songs further than that 100-song limit and see if I could bring it down to 10 of my favorite songs. I got the list down to 18 and was utterly stopped for a good ten minutes. I couldnt cut any of them off because they were all so good, so what I opted to do was to pick the songs that were most influential in my life. Ironically, 10 out of those 16 had a serious personal connection with me so those are the ones I chose:
--in order--
1) Matchbox 20 - If You're Gone (Too may memories with this song. Just one of the best.)
2) SOTY - Until the Day I Die (This is the first screamo band I ever really liked. It really started me into the whole emo-scene and still is my second favorite song of all time)
3) Sting - Brand New Day (This song helped me through the period just before I changed my name. Confused, every morning I would wake up to this song and it would give me a glimmer of hope and happiness, which was what I really needed.)
4) The Ataris - The Hero Dies in This One (You guys might remember this one. I raved about it's message in my LJ for a good week. That one phrase "Stay..who..you..are", the only time the guy actually screams in the entire album, still haunts me.)
5) Matchbox 20 - 3 AM (There are so many different mixes to this song and it just reminds me of different girls I've liked and that everyone has faults.)
6) Sting - Field of Gold (Everytime I feel myself lose grip with who I am I listen to this. This song reminds me of Terry French, a great friend who has died, and that crushes are shallow.)
7) Lifehouse - Everything (Various people I have met because of my love for this song always give me fond memories of it. It also reminds me of a time when I hated it, which gives me a link to my naive past.)
8) Goo Goo Dolls - Broadway (This song reminds me of Yosemite, the Tetons, and Mount Rushmore. It's just a great song, the lyrics are freaking awesome.)
9) The Calling - Wherever You Will Go (I remember my dad introduced this to me three years ago and I remember sitting outside a classroom at lunch in a gloom listening to it during my transition phase. It helped me along greatly and gives me faith in the continuity of love.)
10) Something Corporate - Break Myself (This reminds me of my trip to Vegas a year ago (3rd favorite vacation ever), My Uncles wedding, the first (semi)concert I ever went to and it makes me smile and relate every time I listen to it.)

I've been driving all day. Literally. I got up at 5:30 this morning, feeling like complete shit, and drove to the gas station, filled up my tank, picked up Tyler, and drove to Santa Barbara for the Spring Orientation Seminar. Of course... I guess you cant say I've been driving all day, but I've only been on my legs for a total of four hours since I woke up at five this morning. My right (throttle/brake) foot hurts so much right now I think it's going to fall off, but that's mostly from the damn traffic coming through the basin at 5:00.

I must say, I love Santa Barbara, it's like the epitome of beauty and relaxation until you get on campus, where everything becomes extremely social. Not only did me and Tyler see more hot white girls than we could glance over our shoulders at, we saw sexual invitations on almost every door in every dormitory on campus (we took tours of all the dorms). There was the "take a condom leave a condom" basket, which I was sadly not quick enough to take a snapshot of, and the "OMG I'm cumming" sign that was on three or four dorm doors or the generic "I'm horny" that was on almost all the rest. This place screams "party school", so yeah, cool.

I guess when you get down to it, I didnt go up to SB today to tour the campus so much as to have a good time. And have a good time I did, whether it was walking on bike lanes specifically marked "dont walk here", creating tornados of dust with my car by gassing it in a dirt parking lot, or fighting with swords of bamboo on the Goleta State Beach.














Tommorow I'm off to go on my first Cruise ever. I'm expecting it to be somewhat like Hawaii, that is "warm and memorable". So I'll talk to y'all later.

Lunch today was excellent, tennis tonight looks promising, friday is starting to sond fun, Saturday going back to SB with Tyler, Sunday going to Mexico for a week. Not to mention that my weight is going back down to it's old medium finally and that most of my friendships feel really good.

When I went on my trip I talked about many great things with my mother: women, friends, my future, and the present, but I'll focus on one thing in particular.

I got my digital camera for a birthday present. Being proud of it as I am, I showed it to a friend, not immediately realizing my mistake. All of a sudden I was bathed in a field of compliments: "This is the best camera I've ever seen! It's so great! Where did you get it? I'm so jealous of you!" etc. etc. - all from a single friend. Now I know he means well, he's complimenting An accessory of mine that I value and for the most part I agree with what he's saying, but when people do that* to me I cant help but feel like I'm being flattered. I hate being flattered.

That's just one example. It happens to me all the time, though. The worst part of it is it's like some kind of bad form of intercourse: the person gives you a pat on the back and later on looks to you to give him/her a pat on the back later. As much as I hate being flattered, I hate it even more when I'm expected to flatter someone. It's a form of hipocrisy - eww.

I really dont like when friends tell you what they think about something and then stare at you as if you're supposed to back up. I'm one of those passive people who will agree with you if I think you're right, but I wont say anything should I think you're wrong. And trust me, I think my friends are wrong alot, so it my friends are in essence making it really hard for me when they try to dig an opinion out of me.

"Cheesy-Poofs are much better than Cheese-Its, they're so much more fluffy and cruncy and I dont think anyone likes Cheese-Its better... dont you agree James?"
Hell, I like Cheese-It's better but I really dont feel like arguing about this shitty topic
"Yeah, sure."
Shit, I'm a hippicrite.