A Cynic

A cynic, you say? A cynic, maybe

Or perhaps just stricken with reality

Yes, reality, everyone’s disease

Far reaching and worse than a cough or a wheeze

When our world is imbued with evil and hate

It’s clear we don’t start out with a clean slate

Fallen and fallible, our lives will reflect

But we break the mirror, eager to deflect

Our inklings of sin, we live in denial

We hope for the best, can’t detect the guile

Of innate human nature, found quite repulsive

Our shit is pervasive, we’re anal expulsive

We revel in ignorance, can’t break the trend

Don’t see the light until the bitter end

A cynic, you say? A cynic, maybe

Or perhaps just stricken with reality...

I love you

"I love you. I love you. I'm not even embarrassed to say it - I just, I love you."

"I'm not embarrassed."

"I love you."

"I love you. Why don't we say that every day? Why can't we say it more often?"

"I just love you. I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream 'I love my best friend Evan.'"

"We should…go up on my roof."

-Seth and Evan, Superbad


So...the dialogue here in this movie is for comedic purposes. However, I was thinking about it recently, and I feel that this is actually appropriate. Most of my best friends, I really love them. We should make it clear to the people we care about that they are important to us. Though it's funny in the movie, it makes sense to me. It is a great thing to have close friends that we really care about, and we should never take them for granted.

However, being a huge fan of Fight Club and the hyper masculinity advocated in that movie, where do we (males) find a balance between these two? Just a thought...because parts of me buy into both mentalities. Something to ponder, I suppose.

I really have nothing more for this post...merely my ramblings for the day. Something that gets my mind a-churning about stereotyping and cultural norms...

Eve Carson

Where to even begin? What a strange world we live in...

First of all, it's strange to even think of how it was Eve Carson, of all people, who was killed. The chances of it being the student body president of UNC versus any other student are slim. However, the question that I have is whether her death was random, if it was just for her car, or if it was premeditated. Either way, it is still incredibly sad...I just feel lost without the facts...

If the shooting was merely to get her car, then it blows my mind the society we live in. We are willing to kill another human being simply for the acquisition of material possessions. To what end? What would drive someone to resort to such actions? I cannot comprehend the taking of another person's life over something so petty. The extremity of such an abomination is mind blowing.

The other thing that's been bothering me is the fact that so many people gathered because the victim of the shooting was Eve Carson. Imagine if it had been some other random UNC student. The elaborate ceremonies, the huge response of the student body...would it have been the same? It's hard to tell, though I doubt it would have been. Surely some commemoration similar to this would have occurred, but to this extent? Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but I doubt it. How do we judge how valuable someone's life is? It seemed to me that Chancellor Moeser implied that Eve's impact could be evaluated by the huge throng of people that gathered in the quad. But I don't buy that...not that Eve wasn't an amazing person, but what made her any more important than my friend Roman Reed? No doubt fewer people showed up to his funeral than showed up to this assembly for Eve. But that doesn't make him any less important. How do we gage the value of human life, anyway? Because Eve probably wielded more power than Roman, does that mean she held some edge over him? Though nobody would ever come right out and say such things, I feel that they are implied in the situation.

Everything about the day just infuriates me. These are the inevitable repercussions from the Fall of man. And, I realize I am no better than the people who shot Eve Carson. I hope that everyone prays not just for Eve's family and friends and those who have been affected by the tragedy...but also for the shooters in the incident.

I guess it's just poetry that's on my mind now...

How you like me now? I go blaow
It's that shit that moves crowds
Makin every ghetto foul
I might have took your first child
Scarred your life or crippled your style
I gave you power
I made you buck wild

-Nas, "I Gave You Power"

Fuck what you know.

Well at my brother's prompting, I joined the blogging community. Welcome, me.

I've had a lot on my mind lately. I'm not a huge fan of the ambiguous references people write on blogs, and since I'm not banking on a large audience anyway, I guess I'll be straightforward. Mary Margaret and I had a falling out, and since I spent a huge portion of my free time with her, it's been really weird not talking to her at all. I always assumed at the least even if we weren't dating, that we would still maintain a relationship, but I suppose it will be easier for me to get over her if we don't. Though it's odd to care about someone so much and then lose it all in one instant. I'm trying to cope though, and I've been moderately successful? It's really an up and down thing, at times I can't get it off my mind, but at times I feel I'm making progress. There's just a lot of pain still to be dealt with, and I don't feel the pain will go away for awhile. But I've finally had enough, and I feel I've cut off the root of it. However, I've been quite the cynic the past few days. There's a part of me that almost likes cynicism, and I embrace it easily. In that same vein, I've decided that I'm done trying to date people. My instincts tell me to go after another girl, and there are a few girls I'm attracted to right now that I occasionally debate whether I should try to pursue or not. However, I don't want to jump into a relationship, or use another girl to get over Mary Margaret, or for that matter deal with a relationship right now at all, not after the foul taste that's been left in my mouth from my most recent one. But enough of that - I'd say my head is sufficiently cleared.

I watched Fight Club this weekend with my brother - and I was immediately enamored. Fantastic movie. And the premise of the movie has been running through my head nonstop since I've seen it (of course, what guy doesn't constantly think of glorified masculinity?). I wanted to tell my friends to hit me as hard as they could. I didn't though...maybe that's a good thing. I don't want to follow down the path to nihilism. Anyway, a lot of the quotes from the movie have stuck out in my head, two of them being applicable to my recent development.

"This is your life, and it's ending one moment at a time."

The simplicity of this statement almost makes me blow it off, but I like the frightening truth in the message.

"I felt like destroying something beautiful."

And the last one, which has stuck out most in my mind because of my situation:

"Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me."

The harshness of this statement, especially in the implication of abandonment in friendship, stuck out in my mind. The word "fuck," though you could argue isn't needed, I feel adds to the intensity and impact of the statement. Fuck what you know. I have realized lately that, you don't know about people. You can't trust in anybody else, we're all fallible. I've thought about it, and this statement is especially pertinent to the Christian life. Forget what you know of this life, the only person you can trust in is God. If we place our trust in anything else, then it is futile and it will fail us. Only God will never let us down.