27 July 2009

I would give myself more drive, the ability to follow things through to the end. If there is not end, then the ability to participate as much as possible Please don’t kill the SwayBlog!

Anyway, that ability would have made me finish college first time round, which I’m sure would have affected the course of my entire life. The problem with that though is that if my life *were* completely different, I wouldn’t have had the experiences that gave me all those other lessons in life. Perhaps more importantly, I probably wouldn’t have met all the people that are dear to me. Sure, I might have met other people who would turn out to be just as special, but there’s no way I would go back now & risk not knowing all the guys at Sway, other forums, and everyone I see in person from day to day..

So, the answer to this weeks question is either that (which is too late now for some things in my life, but if applied retrospectively could set of a chain of events that makes changes to the outcome of my life, if not the entire universe!), or nothing at all. No wait, maybe I’d be a bit shorter. *universe rumbles*

I had intended to write this post about my overall addiction, but I decided that I couldn’t narrow it down to just one. So, instead, I decided that I would write about my current addiction: Gossip Girl.

Back in April of this year, I started downloading a torrent of Gossip Girl, but didn’t realise at the time that each episode was in HD format. It took just under three months to fully download Season 1 in it’s entirety, and half of Season 2, and I started watching it two weeks ago.

I absolutely love it, and have already finished watching all of the episodes I downloaded. I’m now downloading more and can’t wait to watch them. I don’t know why I enjoy this program so much; I should really hate watching spoilt American brats moan about how awful their lives are, but I find it so compelling.

I have many addictions. But at the moment (and I mean, over the past couple weeks), it’s been Nintendo.

It all started when I decided to play Legend of Zelda on NES, a game I never owned in my younger years and decided to finally give it a try. I quickly became addicted. Link is my current desktop background. I’ve been to the Nintendo store numerous times, hoping he’ll show up in plushie form.

Nintendo is one of those things that was always a part of me, in some bizarre way. I grew up on the NES, eyes glued to Super Mario Brothers and Tetris. They pretty much make the best gaming systems ever, and I’m determined to get back into it. I bought myself a classic controller for the Wii in preparation for the games I can download from the shop. The next installment in the Zelda series will be the first purchase.

My boyfriend’s been prodding me to get an emulator for my computer. Does he realize how dangerous that would be? The availability of hundreds of thousands of games, with my rekindled love for video games and not a whole lot of time to feed the fire. Already I’m lacking sleep; Zelda’s second quest is ridiculously difficult.

For the most part, I don’t remember my embarrassing moments. When I make a mistake, I’m practically mortified. Like, there’s no way I could ever not be perfect.

These moments usually end in tears. And they’re not major things. In the third grade, I was too shy to present my speech, so I cried. Today, I splashed tomato sauce on the stove and was fighting tears when mom got upset. It’s stupid.

So I really don’t have a “most embarrassing moment,” because they’re all embarrassing to the point I want to crawl into a hole forever.

Yeah, sorry about that everyone.. With hindsight, I realise it might have been better to substitute ‘mistake’ for ‘moment’. But anyway..

I know I’ve made loads of embarrassing mistakes throughout my life, and I guess my brain must have erased most of them from my memory to help cope with the shame of it all, because I can’t remember many, if any! But I do know that without these embarrassing moments, I wouldn’t have the ability to cope with things going wrong in the present day. Most of it’s like water off a duck’s back So I encourage you all to just go for it, forget the fear of sticking your foot in your mouth, take on more than you can handle (as long as it doesn’t get you into too much trouble), because even if you can’t dig yourself out of the hole at the time of embarrassment, I’m pretty sure that you *will* be able to laugh about it afterwards. Or at the very least, talk about it.

To prepare you, you can read through the precious few mistakes my brain forgot to shed:

• While in my initial short stint at college, thinking I could rekindle a relationship (and it all backfiring).
• Losing my swimming shorts while in the sea. Still not entirely sure how this happened. But I had to make it back across the beach to my parents & siblings, stark naked.
• Thinking I could hide my busted fly with a grin, while standing in front of my entire year. When I realised this wasn’t going to work, I used the certificate I was presented with to cover that area. Thanks to this, people thought I was trying to hide an erection.

It’s actually rather fitting, this story.

It doesn’t quite fit into this blog as well as I’d have liked it to, but I think it will work regardless.

Anyway, the story takes us back to a sports changing room, where me and the rest of the boys in my year at school were getting changed for cricket. I’m not entirely sure how old I was, but I am positive that it was Primary School, and you only start sports in P5 (aged 9), so I was between the ages of 9 and 11.

I don’t remember the run up to this specific event, but someone in the changing room must have been doing something that some other boys were giving him a hard time for. In an attempt to stand up for him somewhat, I stood up on the bench and said “guys, leave him alone. Nobody’s perfect”. At this, the room erupted into laughter, with a cacophony of various mocking “nobody’s perfect”s filling the room.

The “nobody’s perfect” thing lasted quite a while, for a few years at least. I can still remember the tone that people used to say it in, but thankfully I never took it much to heart. People soon got bored, and I got on with my life. Saga over.

I say that it’s rather fitting, because in a sense I wasn’t perfect for saying that. You could argue that it wasn’t my place to say anything, and someone who was ‘perfect’ might have assessed the situation to realise that it wouldn’t be a good idea. Also, the fact that the boys were doing such a thing shows that they were clearly not perfect.

Consequently, nobody really is perfect.

How I feel about celebrity deaths is different in every situation, becuase of the myriad of circumstances that can surround a person’s death. 

I usually feel worst about murder.  When I heard about Steve McNair yesterday I was in disbelief.  Not only because he was shot multiple times, but because he was an upstanding citizen, role model for children, had 4 sons and a loving wife, and was so respected around the league.  Same when Sean Taylor’s house was broken in to in Miami – he happened to be home, they shot him in the leg while his girlfriend and their 18 month old daughter hid under the bed, and he passed away in the hospital.  24 fuckin’ years old, murdered in cold blood.  I still get goosebumps when I see his picture.

If something is your own fault I’m not going to feel as bad.  Sure, it really sucks that you died, but maybe you shouldn’t have snorted cocaine and got drunk then got  behind the wheel of a car (general example). 

I guess I also feel worse if it’s someone I follow.  Farrah Fawcet? I have literally no idea who she is, I haven’t thought about her death twice.  Billy Mays I saw all the time on TV, but his life wasn’t something I actively followed, he just yelled at me to buy his products.  Athlete’s live’s would be the ones who I follow the closest, and probably feel the worst when one of them passes.  Especially since I usually watch as many games as possible and they will have pregame memorials and the like.

Overall, every death has so many individual circumstances that I can’t honestly say how I react to every one.  I do know, however, that death sucks.

I’m generally not really fazed by celebrity deaths. In a sense, it makes you realize even more than they’re real people, that they have lives of their own (even out of the spotlight). And it’s unfortunate that we don’t realize that until after they’re gone.

When you hear of death so much, as we did last week, the concept of it really starts to sink in. When I heard of Ed McMahon, it was sad news. Farrah Fawcett, a little tug at the heart strings. Michael Jackson, utter disbelief. The list goes on. You read the news and wonder who’s next. When I was on the subway June 26th, I read the following headline on someone else’s paper regarding Fawcett: “Heaven Gets Another Angel.” I honestly almost cried; their deaths apparently were starting to weigh me down.

I don’t do well with death to begin with. It blows my mind to think that someone can be here one day, and his soul can depart the next. That in moments, the living, breathing body becomes nothing but an empty shell. I can only pray that they’ve made the right decisions in life and will spend eternity in glory.

One could argue that it is because I’m not as passionate about Michael Jackson or his music as some other people are, but generally I believe it’s because I’m a very rational person.

As is the case with anyone, I am sad that they have died. I do not wish death upon anyone (even the likes of Hitler etc.); everybody dies eventually, and so I believe that letting them ‘rot in jail’ (although I would radically rethink the whole “life” sentencing thing, so that it was indeed LIFE) would be far more effective. Therefore, despite the allegations, I am not happy or even impartial to his death.

I am desperately sad that the world has lost such a talent – a musical genius if you will. Nobody in history has equalled his legend so far, and it will probably be a long time before someone does. However, I am not so sad about his death that it causes me to cry, or really mourn. I never met the man, and so there was never a strong enough connection between us for me to feel grievous about the situation.

The president of a Michael Jackson fan club said this recently:

At least 12 people have committed suicide because of the King of Pop’s passing. It is a serious situation that these people are going through but Michael Jackson would never want this. He would want them to live.

I just cannot comprehend what must have been going through these peoples’ minds when they came to that decision? Yes, the world would be devoid of new Jackson music (although there is apparently a library of ~100 unheard songs which Jackson had planned to release solely to his children) but he hasn’t released any new music in YEARS. I just don’t get it.

I’m normally not really bothered by celebrity deaths. Obviously I think it’s a shame they’ve died, but I’ve never really been moved emotionally.

I did, however, feel genuine sadness on hearing about the death of Michael Jackson. Could be a variety of reasons – the way his music made me feel, that I felt sorry for the guy, or that he was a part of my childhood, his music was there while I was growing up.

I wasn’t hysterical or anything, but I did feel a certain emptiness inside, like I’d lost something. Bye Michael, we’ll always have Moonwalker