| i will try to fix you |
[04 Jun 2005|04:12pm] |
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music |
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coldplay- fix you |
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Fair trade. Coffee. Rice. Cotton. Labor. Sugar. Milk. The basics.
The world spends one billion dollars a day subsidising its own farming industry. Countries like Haiti could theoretically feed its entire population, but cheaper, monopolized imports such as American rice and the lack of machinery and technical assistence prevent them from doing so.
Guantanamo Bay. Geneva Convention. Universal Declaraiton of Human Rights. The United Nations. The European Union. The United States. Human trafficking.
Peace in the Middle Easte. Iraq. Iran. Saudi Arabia. Isreal and Palistine. India and Pakistan. Hate. China/Taiwan. North Korea/South Korean. Japan/China. China/Tibet.
Corporate America. New York Stock Exchange. Harvard. Pre-Med. Ivy League Colleges. UCs. SAT scores. Extracirricular activities. AP and Honors classes.
The airport scenes in movies like Love Actually baffle me. How is it that a world full of love can create a world full of problems? Why are we programmed to be so relentless and stubborn, yet never admit to our greed? Why do we feel so much better about ourselves when the nasty facts are sugarcoated? Why do we chose to live a lie? We all think we're right, so which one of us is the liar?
If we know we are witnesses to the world's atrocities, why do we stand back? Are we too consumed with personal problems to realize what's going on around us? How is it that we so willingly allow celebrity gossip and entertainment into our world and keep genocite/rape/torture/injustice out?
In the years to come, none of our current worries will a big deal. Creating a beautiful book at the expense of half the staff hating you, not getting the position you wanted, not meeting deadlines, losing friends, not doing everything you could. It won't matter. People not liking the book, coaches complaining why their best players werent featured, teachers complaining on why their coverage was so little, students complaining why the same kids get featured. Why did we charge your spread so many times, why did we suck the fun out of everything, why were we so exclusive, why did you not get a say.The tireless list is endless. No where will it be any of their faults. Only ours. Only mine. But none of that will matter anymore. Quit your complaining. Do the best that you can do, and make something better out of your life than spending all of your energy refusing to shut up when someone else is talking. Suck it up and accept there's a reason for everything, you can't please everybody, and you can't always get what you want. Think a little more than you usually do and realize there are far too many other problems in the world. Think a little harder and realize the ways you can turn your problem into a solution. It's interesting how some of today's problems stay today's problems and other problems remain problems forever.
In a nutshell: THERE ARE BIGGER FISH TO FRY.
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| but i'm a gilmore |
[01 May 2005|11:59pm] |
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(In 3.04: One's Got Class and the Other One Dyes)
LORELAI: So, I think I’m in touch with the other side.
RORY: The other side of. . .
LORELAI: The other side.
RORY: With republicans?
(In 3.18: Happy Birthday, Baby)
LORELAI: Seventy-five thousand dollars. I feel so rich. And suddenly in complete agreement with everything Bush has to say.
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| it's not enough to bitch |
[25 Apr 2005|08:54pm] |
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music |
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the battle of who could care less- ben folds |
] |
"America is Rome reincarnate. Like the Roman empire, the American empire is vastly powerful and unfathomably corrupt. Like Rome, America imposes her civilisation upon an ungrateful world. Like Rome, America needs bread, circuses and philosopher-statesmen to forestall and yet to hasten her demise." -Lou Marinoff
$81 Billion: ammount Congress approved for military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, in its fifth such emergency spending bill since 9/11
$300 Billion: estimated total Congress has allocated for the combat and reconstruction in these two countries.
Now, I may be no expert on government spendings, but 300 billion dollars can sure do a whole lot in other places AND you'd have people like you for it. "Combat and reconstruction" is so oxymoronic.
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| bbc |
[25 Apr 2005|12:10am] |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4137341.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3699234.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3701414.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4478237.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4068573.stm
 
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| note to self |
[22 Apr 2005|01:43am] |
note to self--
sudan links
http://www.studentsagainstgenocide.org/
http://www.studentsagainstgenocide.org/shirts.php
sudan community
history of genocide
sig- once recognized as genocide, action must be done
class discussion
start in africa/ change now
other problems that arise- women/aids/hiv/children/refugees/2milliondisplaced
the rest of the world
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| as verbatim as i could get |
[14 Mar 2005|12:02am] |
I just want to take a moment to say that Big City Rock is here today because two members of Amnesty International here at your chapter, your high school, Kelly Chen and Stephanie Kim, wrote us a letter and asked us to come down and play, and we came down and played for you guys. Now you all know what Amnesty International is, check out the tables and they’ll tell you all about it.
I know a lot of you can’t vote yet, and it may seem that sometimes voting might not be the best option to be heard. So what I want to do is encourage you to put your voice down on a piece of paper and send it out. Send it out; because if a letter can get us down here at eight in the morning and come out and play, it can do a lot more for the world. (So do it?)
Shit, I <3 you Nate.
muahahah.
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| i'll be quoting this whole damn book |
[09 Feb 2005|10:40pm] |
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mood |
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exposed to greatness |
] |
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music |
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pink moon- nick drake |
] |
p.22
If you want my advice, … you’ve made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?
p.53
It’s no use wasting what you’ve got on an ideal that you’ll never reach, that they’ll never let you reach. It’s no use, taking that marvelous thing you have and making a torture rack for yourself out of it. Sell it, Roark. Sell it now. It won’t be the same, but you’ve got enough in you. You’ve got what they’ll pay you for, and pay plenty, if you use it their way. Accept them, Roark. Compromise. Compromise now, because you’ll have to later, anyway, only when you’ll have gone through things you’ll wish you hadn’t. You don’t know. I do. Save yourself from that.
Try it. Try and be reasonable for once.
There's one thing about you, the thing I'm afraid of. It’s not just the kind of work you do…You love your work. God help you, you love it! And that’s the curse. That’s the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren’t you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that’s not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That’s the only kind they fear. I don’t know why. You’re opening yourself up, for each and every one of them. - Cameron *
*Totally reminiscent of a dream I once had. The discouragement of lost causes and the encouragement of giving up and giving in.
mmmmh, five hours on the bus. I'm definately hauling this beautiful, heavy ass book.
This photographer thing is ridiculus. I don't know the whole story, which is why I don't really know if what I think has the right relevence, which is why I haven't said anything. You never really know until you're on the other side. I just think that the definition of certain titles have been worn out and probably never unanimously defined in the first place. If you're critical over what you think matters, expect others to be too. If you think someone should do their job correctly, you should do yours correctly too. Pointing fingers and bagging doesn't really encourage change nor a want to change. I should know, shouldn't I? All the excuses in the world cannot make up for the failure to brainwash people into following your words. Maybe one day I'll have the guts to say everything. For now, I'm glad this will end in four months, and I will never have to deal with it again...at least not the high school version.
A brighter chapter of the same subject- running barefoot down the stairs with disgusting proof materials and my flip flops in hand, jumping into Kina's car, running to the Post Office, Tiff opening the wrong locked door, making it just in time, menstral cramps as an aftermath: priceless.
You can't love the work and survive as the same person you once were. You can't love your work and expect others to understand. You can't love your work and coexist in world with others who don't. You can't love and be practical. Because everyone who cares is playdough and everyone who doesn't care is a robot.
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| you dont even care to make them think as you do |
[05 Feb 2005|09:17pm] |
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music |
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the la song- dave barnes |
] |
p. 012
Roark: Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?
Dean: But all the proper forms of expression have all been discovered long ago.
Roark: Expression of what? The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden ancestor. An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon. Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important- what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right- so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand it.
p. 015
Dean: You don’t care what others think which might be understandable. But you don’t even care to make them think as you do?
Roark: No.
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| i don't know what part of this passage to bold |
[31 Jan 2005|07:47pm] |
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music |
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shattered- remy zero |
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It is not in the nature of man- nor of any living entity- to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out some run down by imperceptible degrees to lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
ayn rand.
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| tennessee williams is my emo buddy |
[25 Jan 2005|09:52pm] |
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
Make voyages! Attempt them... there's nothing else.
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
To be free is to have achieved your life.
We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
Everyone says he's sincere, but everyone isn't sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he's sincere there wouldn't be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones!
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
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| stupid stupid stupid |
[01 Jan 2005|06:44am] |
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mood |
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 my sleeping scheduel is wrong |
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music |
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winding road- bonnie somerville |
] |
03.13.2003:
John Norris & Hans Blix- cheif U.N. weapons inspector
Norris: Are you hopeful that war can still be avoided?
Blix: I think so. I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can. I would have a little more patience than some have here, but not much more.
Norris: This recent flap over not mentioning the drone is somewhat indicative of the fact that just about every time you have something to say nowadays, one side or the other takes a word or a phrase or a sentence and they want to use it to bolster their case. Do you feel like you're caught in sort of a squeeze play at times?
Blix: Everybody has tried to get mileage out of us and what we say. But I'm the servant of the Security Council. I'm not the servant of any individual member, whether it's the United States, or Russia, or anyone. We are in nobody's pocket and we are not supposed to be. I think that we have to do our job well, investigate thoroughly and then describe very honestly what we see to the Security Council. And some of the things might please people there and other things may not please the people. It is true that the report shows that the Iraqis over the years have hidden a lot of stuff that they have not truthfully reported on numbers of this one thing or another, but it's also true that the report nowhere says or maintains that there remain weapons of mass destruction. We cannot exclude it in a good many cases, but that's not the same thing as saying they are there.
Norris: Do you believe that in your lifetime, in our lifetime, we will see the world rid of weapons of mass destruction?
Blix: Well it's very hard to dis-invent them. If you take the biological weapons in the United States we still will have perhaps a single individual who was able to make anthrax, dry it, and spread it through the mail and cause terror. So there's no way you can dis-invent that and chemical weapons have been the weapons of choice for terrorists as they were in Japan in the subway a number of years ago, so they will not be gone. But I don't think there's any reason for a rant of hysteria, no.
At the same time, though, one must not disregard and forget the things that are breeding these terrorist movements. Why do they become terrorists? Why do they become so desperate they are willing to blow up airplanes or buildings? Therefore we have to look at the social problems as well.
Norris: Why do you think there's such a reticence on the part of governments to deal with the "whys" of terrorism and instead simply go after the elimination of these terrorists in whatever ways they can?
Blix: Because the root causes are even more difficult to tackle then the symptoms of it. To wield the big stick and strike here and there and have big surveillance of telephones or whatnot, that can be done, but to get at the social conditions — better democracy, more education in the Middle East, giving the hope for the many youngsters in that part of the world — now that's harder. Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well.
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