Social Deficinacy

The more I'm around people, the more I realize that I have no idea how to be with people. I have no understanding of how to intergrate into a group of people with no connections to me ... or .. .I don't know. I can manage to do it at work, and I suppose its not as bad as I would describe it, but still... I feel like I'm at a deficit when it comes to social situations. I dunno...

Mismashing the two previous entries...

I've had some of the discussions covered in the book with my mom before. Well, I talked. She ignored. But still... I want to be different. I want to talk with my kids. Discuss things. Make them think.

Vowage:

In class today Dr. Littman was talking about the importance of staying up with the readings, and I realized that I've not really read almost any of the readings for this semester, and really, not in any class yet. Which is a dangerous thing for me, since I'm just a little too intellectually snobbish, and would be really likely to just let it slide. So I need to make a personal vow:

I, Steven E. Dick, do vow to read the readings. Every one. And write a paper of at least half page on each reading, stating topic(s) covered, authors view(s) [if applicable], my view [if applicable] and a summary. From this day (1/24/08) onward.

Wow, I'm such a nerd.

The oddity of life

aka - On another subject all together...

I still wonder about my parents. They never followed up. They havn't tried even once to contact me, or anything. And I don't know how to feel about that.

On one hand, I could be glad that I don't have to work as hard to ignore them. And it does validate the Button Parental Doctrine ('They F***ing SUCK!").

On the other hand... Seriously!? How do you not even respond? What. The. Fuck. ?. Your only son tells you that you broke his heart and he doesn't want to be around you... and you don't even acknowledge it.... fight for him... apoligize... rationalize... argue... something...

On the third hand, do they see me (or more likely Button) as the evil one, doing the wrong? Yes, I'm sure that my mom does. And my dad has the backbone of a weekling amoeba... (ok, I can spell amoeba but not dilema?)

I dunno... I'm confused.

Oh wacky school...

Another Wednesday, another day sitting in class waiting to begin.

Entry in Buttony List style:

-I'm really feeling good. I don't know how or why my mood works, but I need to figure it out and get some control over my melancholy feelings. I don't know how exactly to do that though.


-So far, school is going well. I'm really in it this semester though. This is real this time, which isn't to say that last semester was not, or that my awesome grades were not, but this semester is more like what I was expecting. Hell, we even learned the first night of Pre-C. I was overjoyed.

-Work is still assbackwards, but oh well. I did sort of relate the idea of the prisoner delima (ok, so I really can't spell that currently..) to work.

-Button seems to be doing ok. I just worry that she will let herself get worn down. She needs to start worrying about that more. But I think she really likes her job, co-workers non-withstanding, which is really good.

Weekends of Joy

We get such little time together these days, Button and I. But when we do get time together, I'm glad we're able to spend together and enjoy each others company as much as we do. I always wonder if this is how other couples spend their time, how they live, and I realize I don't care. I love my life just as it is.

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Day one.. all over again

So, this is semester the second. Already off to a brighter and better future than Semester The First did.

Chem Lab - Got Nate as a lab partner. Our TA has the awesomest african accent. This should be a really fun class.

Chem 121a - The freaking lecture hall was packed. I mean, just packed. This also looks like a good class, although its going to be a total repackage of what I just got done with last semester, but whatevs.

Pols 112 - I am equal parts looking forward to and dreading this class. Parts of it are going to freaking drag for me as total over-recall, and some is going to be cool. I like my teacher, he seems really interested and dynamic.

So now I'm waiting for Math.

So far, so good. Only philosophy tomorrow to go for new classes after this.

New starts to the same old things...

I picked up my textbooks for the upcoming semester. And... I really hope I don't have to spend too much time back tracking in Chem and PreC. That would really blow.

One down...

So I finally took my first final. It was... unimpressive. It was just another test, just over such a wider scope. But it went well, I feel.

Ah, my favorite joke...

moar funny pictures

ARG!!!!

I have one class, ONE FUCKING CLASS, that is ruining my ENTIRE schedule next semester.

Yes, I'm annoyed.

Also, I missed four points on the chem test due to poor calculator skills.

Ah, happyness, my fleeting friend...

So its back, the mysterious fog. Its my fault its back. I let myself slip. I let the junk food monster out. I've more or less come to the opinion I'm a junk food addict. I don't want to eat that shit, but once my mind decides it wants it, it all I can think about. And it was all I could think about last weekend. God, I'm so dumb.

I fucked up Buttons birthday because I couldnt figure out what to get her, so I kept putting it off till it was too late. I'm such an idiot.

I dont know what I should do anymore. I dont know who to turn to. I had the thought yesterday that now that we have a garage, I could pull Lil'Buddie in there, and me and Davis could just go to sleep, so he wouldnt have surgery and I could just finally sleep and not be a burden to everyone in my life. I could finally stop being the butt of everyone's joke. I could finally find peace, maybe. I dunno...

Yeah, that sounds a lot worse that I actually am.

Life, at its unfairest.

Davis has to have surgery again, this time he's going to loose his leg. His growth has gotten so huge and he's in pain and uncomfortable. Its just not fair. He's had such a rough life, and it just never seems to get any easier for him. I'm worried how he is going to react to loosing his leg. What would that be like, to be put to sleep in a strange place and wake up missing a paw? I feel so bad, for him, and for doing this to him, and for not wanting to do this to him. He deserves so much better from the world.

Button still hasnt found a job. She's been applying, but no one calls her back. She is taking it badly, and feels it is a reflection on her that they dont call her back. Maybe, or maybe she's applying for jobs she overqualified, and she's too afraid to really try to get a job that she should have, a real job for her, which would match her intelligince and excitement, and her belief in how things could be.

Her school has been going rough for her, and she is becoming disillusioned. She has such a pure spirit, and she was so excited and happy to go to graduate school, and now to watch her be beaten down by these people, and this school to which she had put so much hope and excitement and energy into let her down is maddening and upseting.

Its her birthday today, and we dont have the money to do anything. We're so fucking broke, and I'm so tired of being broke, and I am loosing my hope for the future. It seemed so bright just a little while ago, but now it seems so distant and dark, unforeseeably scary.

I'm thinking of applying for a night job at either schnucks or walmart so we can actually have some money. I dont know when I'll be able to sleep, but I need to do something to save us. Button and I don't see each other much anymore, so its not like it would be a huge adjustment, except we wouldnt get to fall asleep together, which is something I'd miss. But we need the money so badly.

The darkness of my mind is creeping in again, so I imagine thats colored my mind. I try to shove it aside, but it hides off to the side, waiting till I'm not looking to creep in again. I dont know what we're going to do. I love school so much, but I shouldn't have come back. We couldnt afford it, and I knew we wouldnt be able to. But now I'm even more in debt, so I can't drop back out.

What the hell?!

84 on my math test?!? Dammit!

I only missed the first three questions, and even just part of them. But I don't see what I did wrong on one of them.

But the rest of the test was perfect. I'm so pissed off.

Plus, now I have a B in the class. Fuck.

Update - Found my mystery mistake. I'm a fucking idiot. Dammit.

(Attempted) Philosophical Ramblings...

So I'm waiting for algebra to begin, but I'd thought I'd start a little philosophical homework early...

If god does not exist, to whom do we have a higher moral imperative to?

In the reading I still need to do for class, Kierkegaard says that we have a higher moral imperative to god above the universal (the morals/ethics of society). We could thus do things that our society would tell us is wrong or bad, but to god would be right. I suppose you could equate that to the people who bomb abortion clinics (which is a scary thought now that Button is volunteering at one now). According to us, and according to our laws, what Eric Rudolph did was wrong. But since he felt he was working for his higher power, i.e. god, he felt that his actions were right and justified.

I suppose this thinking could make the killing of the innocents in the bible and the smoting of Soddom and Ghmorra as cool as well. As long as your god tells you that you should do something, and he is your higher authority, where your higher moral imperative is, then you are not only correct but almost required to do the action you have been called to do.

So the question I pose is this: if there is no god, to whom do we owe a higher moral imperative to?

Obviously, the first answer is to yourself. But this seems to be a false answer, since we cannot be our own higher moral authority, because that would create a paradox where we would be both the lower and higher authority, both answerable to the other. So we cannot be our own higher moral authority.

We could query society for a higher moral authority, but society is already a moral authority, and it cannot be the higher authority and the universal authority. There has to be the dichotomy, just as we ourselves cannot be the HMA.

(to be continued...)

Halloween!

Its halloween! Our Display was quite a success, with several people commenting on it when I got home from work. Sadly, though, I've only had a Red Power Ranger get some candy.

Anywhoo... Boo!

7:46 - Update ~ Black suit Spidy and a fairy (possibly princess) got some reeses goodness.

Alan Keys is running a pyramid scheme...

http://www.alankeyes.com/pledge.php

Ha!

I think I did good on my Chem test. No reason to feel otherwise, anyways. And I finally took my time on a test. I've never actually done this before succesfully. Now I just need to study for my math test this weekend.

I've spent hours here on campus, and realized something... ...I dont feel out of place here. I belong here. Which is awesome as all hell.

Ugh...

I hate studying.

The tao of Steve...

Button is off to the St. Louis Vegetarian Society meeting tonight, so I took the bus to school early today. When I stepped off the bus, I was rained on. It was a soft sprinkle with large drops of rain. I've been reading a lot this semester, mostly (actually, only) in philosophy. I've actually been enjoying it a lot, and I think I've found my mind opening up a bit. Perhaps not like in the existence of the mind or whatnot, but on life. Which brings me back to the bus ride here, and Button's trip to eat vegi/vegan foods and our life in general right now.

We're broke, and we've been having problems. Mostly they both are related to buttons problem finding a job, and her disillusionment with graduate school. I'm having the time of my life anymore. I'm really enjoying school overall, and work is turning out to be pretty good. The only problem I've had was my little buddy car is having neurological problems and is being looked at.

But I think the problem we're having is this: I've found not quite enlightenment, but some sense of peace in the world, and with myself. Outside of the problems with my mom, I find myself feeling better, and much happier than I have in a long time. But Button hasn't. And I don't know how to share how I feel, and how to get her in the same moment as I am.

And I wonder if part of how I feel is from the stuff I've been reading. I chose existentialism because I thought it would be interesting, but I never thought it would be so life enhancing. Existence is what you make of it, and I find that thought alone to be amazing and life changing. We are what we chose to be, our lives are as they chose to be.

Two people can experience the same event but have two totally different moments, two experiences, totally different from the other, because how they chose to experience the moment. I find myself trying to incorporate this kind of thinking into my life, my mind. My world is this moment, and I shape it by how I experience it.

Apart from that, reading The Search for Schrödinger's Cat also influenced this thinking. Science tells us that we can't know anything about what we wish to study without experimenting on it, and then we can only learn what we experiment for, and only what we experiment for at the moment we experiment for it. Lost? We can only know about something when we study it at the moment we study it. We influnce it with our exam of the object, and it influences us as well.

Life, and our experiences during it, is influenced by our experiencing if, and we are influenced by it as well. We chose how we live our life, and how to experience the moments within it based in no small part on how we have chosen to experience previous events, and how those events have effected our own choices. We are victims to no one but ourselves. We are masters of ourselves, and our world.

And that is the single most awesome thought ever.

And what does this have to do with Button going to STL and me getting rained on? The sky was cloudy, but there was only one rain cloud in the sky, right over head, raining on me. It was a really cool experience, to see the actual cloud that was raining on you. In a sense, you are being touched by the cloud, it is reaching down and experiencing the world, and you. Sometimes existentialism is cool.

And no, I cant use any of this for class.