"I Do" but I Don't

There seems to be an aversion to marriage that, in our society, is becoming increasingly more popular and acceptable in younger generations. From TV shows (like ABC's "Better With You") to popular songs (like Train's "If It's Love"), the idea that a marriage may, in fact, not be a commitment that feeds the growth of love, but rather a burden that hinders it, seems to be gaining more and more supporters every day. Though I have not decided where I stand personally on the issue, I do think that both sides hold strong opinions about their opposers that tend to leave them rather narrow-minded. It can be difficult to accept either mindset if you're not aware of the intentions of the form of commitment. So let's examine the two options:

A Daily Commitment
I can see where these people are coming from. I really can. As Train says, "I'm afraid when I hear stories about husband and wife, there's no happy ending". I can respect the people who choose not to get married. There are some people who, with marriage, would simply stop trying. Sure it's not a respectable mindset, but it happens to the best of us. The idea of making a commitment without getting married is centered around that concept of waking up every morning and choosing to love your partner. Similarly, you are working constantly, daily, to fill the role of the ideal mate, to keep your partner happy and make sure that they never feel a lapse in your love. Without marriage, the goal of every day is being so good to your significant other that they couldn't possibly leave you. In marriage, it can be easy to fall into the trap of taking each others love for granted. Every day you awake and know that no matter what kind of shit you pull off, your wife is still gonna be your wife the next morning. Especially after the hundreds of dollars she payed on that white dress and ice sculpture. If she wanted to get rid of you, she'd have to go through a big hassle, which would take a lot of time. Essentially, it allows you almost too much time to make up for your mistakes, possibly resulting in a generally bitter relationship held together by the fact that each party is too lazy to go through a divorce. Some call this daily guaranteed love "unconditional love". But if your spouse is truely to love you no matter what you do, what's going to stop you from doing something completely awful? Others argue that not being married encourages a relationship in which both parties are free to see whoever they want, which is not true at all. There is still a commitment, still a monogamous bond. It's just in this bond, each person agrees to live their life winning the love of their partner. In marriage, the promise is to love their partner despite their imperfections. Being married doesn't necessarily keep one from having relations with someone who is not their partner any more than simply making a commitment does. Essentially, the goal of making a non-marital commitment is to spend each day pleasing each other and promise never to take each others love for granted.

Marriage
Marriage is a good idea. That's probably why it's been going on for so long. We all know it's implications and importance from a religious aspect. But there are so many other glorious benefits to marriage as well. First of all, two people use this ceremony to pledge their lives to each other, to commit to loving one person for the rest of their life. Being able to trust your partner enough to make this commitment implies a very strong, unbreakable connection between two people. And if you're willing to celebrate the fact that you will see this same person every day for the rest of your life in front of all of your family and friends, then it is obvious that the depth of the relationship being solidified is truly remarkable. If you can accept that you will never be with another lover for the rest of your life, if you are content, even thrilled, to spend the rest of your life becoming part of this one person, then marriage is a statement of weight. It means more than just a ring and a title and a pretty ceremony, but it means, quite simply, that you are happy- that your partner never has to prove themself to you.

I will be very curious to see, in the future as these non-marital commitments become more popular, whether they experience the same complications as marriages, or if the relationships formed through these kinds of bonds will actually operate more smoothly. It will be difficult to track, obviously, being that a divorce is much more widely publicized than a break-up. But I think our society can learn a lot about human nature and the future of society by keeping tabs on these innovative individuals.

A Rant of Frustration

This post deserves no opener, no segway, no introduction, because, frankly, I tried to write one and not only would none suffice, each consecutively horridly written paragraph drained exponentially from the stream of furry I was feeling. So I deleted everything I wrote, stopped to make this small explanation of circumstance- I have come upon a rare homework assignment that actually inspired me to do something not-required- and began my rant:

In a certain article found in this past week's newspaper I located an editorial by a grouchy, perpetually frowning, slightly asian, disconcerted man by the name of Cal Thomas: Columnist. He wrote about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and why it should not, under any circumstances, be repealed. This man has officially made my uber-naughty list for the Christmas season, and assuming that I am able to locate his address online, he may be getting a very very large lump of coal shoved somewhere very very uncomfortable in the very very near future.

It is not the subject or opinion of this guy that really tick me off so bad. It's the pure doucheyness of it all (a word which, but the way, I have become quite found of mutilating into different parts of speech when I can find no better words to describe someone of complete rotten guts). The subject matter could easily be handled, by a more mature and considerate man, in a way that could come off almost objectively. Instead, it seems this man went miles out of his way just to make a point about his pure hatred of homosexuality. I don't mean just a "side-trip-to-Starbucks-for-a-quick-soy-mocha-latte-break" out of your way. I mean a "side-trip-to-a-remote-Costa-Rican-coffee-plantation-for-an-authentic-strawberry-coffee-brewed-by-locals-on-my-way-to-the-grocery-store" out of your way. And while we're there, let's insult the Costa Ricans for not being a creamy white wrinkly Asian mix like me. But really. Here are just a few of the audacious quotes that flow through this man's conscious thought:

"Why are we witnessing so many challenges to what used to be considered a shared sense of what is right? It is because we no longer regard the Author of what is right."

"Perhaps Gate should re-read the Constitution..."

"The military is one of our primary national upbringings. So is marriage. No wonder the gay rights movement seek to undermine both. There are consequences when foundations are destroyed"

And my personal most-detestable:
"The Congress has a duty to save us from the pursuit of our lower nature if we won't listen to that other voice. If they care."

What is this man ON?! Oh yes, because all the people that don't shun homosexuals as a lower species, as a life form that has chosen a path of perversion out of their own desire for pleasure are disobeying God? Because we who allow human being to speak what they truely are and don't force them to contain their identities for the contentment of others are serving Satan. By George, Cal. You've just condemned quite a large, welcoming, and much more congenial than yourself chunk of society to Hell right there. I hope your blind submission to the multiple translations of people hundreds of years ago gets you a high chair in heaven, though you might lose a few points with the Big Guy over the section on "loving your neighbor" which you seem to have overlooked. But wait, maybe that's a translation error. Someone must have missed the assertion after that which states "unless he can design a mean sweater vest" (excuse my intense stereotyping).

And truly Cal, you're advising others to read the Constitution? What about a little piece of that document that guarantees "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? If I'm not mistaken, liberty means freedom; having the right to be yourself. Would you ask a black man to deny his color to get into the military? A woman her sexuality? No. Would a black man in the military have angered men years ago, made the bond between soldiers difficult? Like hell. But how many of our soldiers are black today? How many of your "264,600 men and women" projected to leave early if Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed would not have been there today if it weren't for African Americans in the military? And why must it always be that those who want to fight most, who are most loyal, are the ones that our soldiers are too ashamed to be fighting for? How can men be expected to go out and fight in honor of, to protect, to represent their nation, when they can't even learn to accept the people in it? Why should the freedom of individuality be a privilege that is decided upon by a count of the people who won't accept it? Why are the voices of those who cry out with 'why things shouldn't be' translated into laws, while the voices of those crying out with 'what could be' are quieted. Why do we inquire of the opposition "why not", but never of the advocates, "why?"?

If you can't put your feelings into words... make one up.

Of all the words that can be randomly generated, I am surprised that a word has not yet been conceived for the yearning to write ideas but the inability the think them. This has been happening to me increasingly more often as of late and it is exceedingly frustrating. Some might call this phenomenon writer's block, but it's more than that. It's this overwhelming... stuckness. Nothing I write sounds... right. Generally, my syntax is experiencing some kind of unpleasant spasm that leaves me spewing the most surface level vocabulary and awkwardly basic sentence structures.

I must have randomly generated about 30 word today before I gave up, frustrated, and decided to create my own word: syntlapse. It is a lapse of effective and artful syntax. Appropriately, when pronounced, the tongue gets a little tripped up in the "ntl" section, causing the word to come out in a sketchy, unsure auditory area somewhere between two and three syllables. In essence, it is clumsy. It makes you feel like an idiot to say. It embodies that feeling behind its definition.

I have created a beautiful creature here- this syntlapse of mine. For years to come- okay, my writing is increasing exponentially in its... ugh. I'll just... eh. I- stop. I'll just stop.

Space, the enter key, and other interjections of nothingness.

It never ceases to amaze me how much power is in space.

This is not a philosophical aphorism (though I should receive commendations, and perhaps several brownie points for using the word "aphorism" in context), but rather a shockingly suface-level observation. When I say "space", I do not refer to that big, vast universe in which we float. Not the space that is "big. Really big. You just wouldn't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is", as Douglas Adams would say. No, I refer to, quite simply-       . Space.

The space bar, the enter key, the tab button (I assume, in rare, awkward situations) are all marvelous tools when it comes to blogging. Tapping just one of these can convey an entire facial expression. They can begin a whole new idea, they can add blunt humor to any otherwise boring and foreboding block of text. Best of all, they help lazy people see all the interesting parts of the blog, and skip the dull commentary.

Because people who just read the short sentences are lazy.

You, the reader, receive commendations and brownie points in abundance if you read only that sentence while skimming over this entry. I would stop writing now, but I need enough dull-looking text here to balance out the entry. If I stop now, the single sentence won't stand out. Perhaps there's an art to directing the mind's eye around a piece of work. Perhaps it is like a painting. I'll consider this an experiment. Test one.

"There's a reason for the world- You and I"

Sometime every grain of your existence seems to shift at once, seems to sink down, seems to join forces with all the other specs of negativity in your life and overpower the good, so that all at once, in one thunderous jolt, your very foundation experiences a stomach-turning second of free fall. That second is horror. That second might be a day, a week, a year. But ultimately, that second is just that. In the universe, it's a second. The hardest part is not questioning that second. As you're free-falling, as you're sinking, if all you do is ask yourself questions- why am I doing this? why is this happening to me? does it get any better?- then how can you ever know when to stick out your arms and catch yourself? If you're so preoccupied with introspection, how can you ever be prepared to land? One day, things will get better. One day, you'll overcome that fear. You'll reach that goal. One day they'll get along, and along the way, you'll learn to get along without them. But you have to be awake enough to realize when you've hit the ground. You have to stay conscious, even when all you want to do is shut your eyes and sleep, so that when the fall ends, you'll be ready to land.

Blogs

In a quest to learn more about blogging, the art of recording pointless musing in a public forum, I stumbled upon a stunning realization. In fact, blogging is not synonymous with my definition in hardly any account. Blogging, to my complete surprise, is more commonly utilized for the sharing of political, technological, or otherwise innovative ideas.

Go figure.

My blogs can  be described as none of these. In fact, if there were a verb to most accurately describe my writing, it would be "extrovative". In other words, the exact paradox of innovation. Oh, how naive I was.

But why is it, as I search for famous and popular bloggers, that my google results are consistently and relentlessly polluted with websites guiding me to a list of marketing strategies, or a rambling on the newest java update, or an accumulation of commonsensical ways to reduce stress; ridiculously over-explained by closeted egoists and peppered with humbling comments arrogantly suggesting a completely fabricated inferiority complex? I see no benefit of these forums to society. Trust me, the American people do not have an intense longing and desire to hear more political rants, more argumentation, more exploitation, more invection. They have no moral or emotional need to comprehend the exact guidelines of every web program. They are not improved by reading "10 ways to simplify your life" or "5 most effective ways to show your husband you care"; wordy and modern recitations of age-old proverbs that, when carried out, seem eerily similar to most of the acts commonly included in the embodiment of elementary respect.

I realize that this post has become somewhat hypocritical, but it is not to become habit. It is a promise and a disclaimer. I will never again write a post against a subject, on politics, concerning technology, or offering advice, unless from a purely philosophical standpoint...

Or if they happen to come up on my random word generator.

In my blog, admittedly, I waste time. But I don't waste words.

Spaciousness

Sometimes it feels as though the world isn't nearly spacious enough- that we seem to keep creating more and more out of nothing until what was once unobtrusive and contained is now overwhelming us, and we find ourselves drowning in our own conceptions. The real issue is that there is no way to turn something back into nothing, for once an object or an idea has been born, while it's light may be doused, nothing can fully erase the shadows that linger where is once occupied time. It is not only our petty materials that overcrowd our world, but our superfluous thoughts as well. We live as though answers are like gems to collect, and waste our days away filling the innocent air with difficult questions- questions that cloud our horizons and lay heavy on our hearts, when the answer to the biggest question of all is to simply stop asking. If only we could clear away our worrying thought- filter out the unnecessary  like sand from water and toss it to the side- how much lighter our lives would be. Were the world more spacious, were there room to stretch our arms and run our fingertips through the clean air, then maybe we could find some purpose. Were we not paralyzed in a thick mud that kept us from seeing light from dark, up from down, that left us floundering uselessly in limbo, maybe we would be able to find direction. Without all of our clutter, with space for our mind to think and feel and run, we would find that discerning direction is easier with room to breathe, and that the path there is much more blissful.

Chumminess

Chumminess! Is this word not adorable? Just saying it makes me want to hug a woodland creature or play chubby bunny. My British subconscious is squealing with joy right now for "chumminess", as you may have guessed, does, in fact come from the word "chum" and is defined by answers.com as "the quality of affording easy familiarity and sociability". I wonder if the British actually use this word, or some variation of it, for the noun can also be altered from "chum" to "chuminess", "chummily", "chummier" and "chummiest" (which, incidentally, if sung in the correct order sound eerily similar to "The Littlest Elf"'s theme song from "A Series of Unfortunate Events"). I can just see the little top-hatted, pot-bellied men now, holding their eyeglasses in one hand and their protruding stomachs in the other, greeting each other- "Ello thare Arther owld chum. 'Ow ahre yew this mawning?" "Quite well my friend. And yawself? Yew aulways ware the chummiest li'le mahn." "Owe yaw're tew coined Arther, yawr chumminess is fawr superior tew moine." Arther seems to be the only man's name I can imagine being said in a British accent, is that strange? That, and something that sounds like "delirious slack"...

Consignee

When I say the word "consignee" to myself, I think of cocktails. The way it rings in my head, the resounding tones resemble words like "concierge", "core competencies", "connoisseur" and other big shiny corporate terms. Or maybe it's just really hollow in there. Nonetheless, I was therefore pleased to find out that this word was created not by the french or the business class, but that the origin of the "ee" at the end of the word was conceived by the same group of simpletons who decided that putting "ee" at the end of any word was an easy way to get out of having to remember more words than necessary. Yes, that fancy word "consignee" comes from the same family as "abductee", "dedicatee", and, arguably, "pwnee". I've always found the concept of the "ee" rather sneaky. I feel as though I'm conning the English language whenever I employ it. Example: "It is now time to present your gifts to their... oh, shit, what's the word?... giftEE, my friends. Please locate your giftEE and gift them now." And then of course you always run the risk of misplacing the accentuation, so that it sound as though you are just fond of an object in a motherly way. One misconstrued emphasis and suddenly it is not the recipitents of the gifts that you are refferring to, but rather the giftys. "Please locate your gifty now." There are some words, I must point out, that it seems ridicullous to ever consider turning into an "ee" word. Such as "banishee". First of all, who the hell uses the word banish in the first place? The only place I can recall having heard it is in Romeo and Juliet, and I can't imagine Prince Esculas reffering to Romeo as his "young banishee". Also, "biographee"? Was anyone aware that was a word? It is the subject of a biography, which, in my opinion, should be a "biographyee". Luckily, no one was dumb enough to recommend the word "autobiographee". I suppose they decided "author" would suffice. Unfortunately, "friskee" is not a word, although I can see some comically awkward situations arising from miscomunications during a police frisk if it were. A consignee, should you like to know, is "the person to whom a shipment is being delivered in a contract of carriage whether by land, sea, or air". The method of transportation is apparently vital to the definition. Therefore if the shipment is delivered by some other route other than land, sea, or air, the recipiant cannot be referred to as a consignee. Like, for instance, teleportation.

A blog that isn't about bursa

When I first got my randomly-generated word for today I was concerned. Not because I knew what the word was, or thought it would be difficult to write about, but because, yet again, I had no clue what the word meant. I generally accept myself to be pretty well-versed in my vocabulary, but the "uncommon" level of my random-word generator has been continually leaving me stumped. I was about to consider it a personal failure that I wasn't familiar with any of these words when I googled it and realized why. " A bursa is a small, fluid-filled sac lined by synovial membrane with an inner capillary layer of slimy fluid (similar in consistency to that of a raw egg white)." Um, ew? Maybe I wasn't so far off yesterday when I dubbed this generator "obscure skin diseases that will make your stomach turn to look at". Maybe I was just being too specific. I am going to formally change my description of this level of the word generator to "obscure, nasty things about your body that you didn't really want to know about... or hear compared to breakfast food". Or maybe "things that would be awkward to find in your boyfriend's search history." I'm beginning to think the creators of this word generator and just trying to mess with me. Kudos to them for making me title two successive posts after sickening bodily anomalies. Maybe some day I will be blessed with a nice word like "religiosity" or "cinnabar". Damn, cinnabar? I just got those words out of the random word generator as well. With words like "cinnabar" in that generator, how do I keep getting stuck with "bursa" and "seborrhea"? I want to write about cinnabars, that sounds delicious. I wonder what it means. I wonder if they have cinnaminibars as well...

Seborrhea

The first word that popped up on my handy dandy random word generator this evening was "Seborrhea". I had no clue what this word meant, but in an effort to expand my vocabulary and potentially make for an interesting blog, I googled the word. That was a mistake. The search yielded 241,000 results, but the thing that really caught my eye, the thing that made me silently scream "Great Scott!" inside, the thing that caused me to instinctively flinch back and squint my eyes in protection was the series of images in which people displayed a disgusting and uncomfortable rash-like disease in various parts of their bodies. What was this?! I set the random word generator to "uncommon", not "obscure skin diseases that will make your stomach turn to look at" (although I'm sure there is a generator for that somewhere in this infinite internet of ours). As a side note, I have always felt bad for those individuals who provide examples of diseases in photographs- they always have this awful, defeated look on their face- and rightfully so. I mean how do they get looped into getting those pictures taken in the first place? "I'm sorry Bill, it seems you have a chronic disfiguring skin condition. You will have to live with it your entire life, people will probably give you funny looks, and, I'm not going to lie, it will most likely effect your sex life. Do you mind if we take a picture of you for old housewives to look at so they can self-diagnose their kids?" Behind those pitiful expressions they're probably thinking "My God, this is the worst news I've ever recieved in my life." or perhaps "I'm going to switch to that doctor across town that doesn't employ a medical photographer." And then there are the people who don't have chronic conditions and, bless their souls, get cured. "Hey, aren't you that girl that was in the medical textbook? Yeah yeah, I didn't recognize you at first without the eczema all over your face That was some quality modeling there..." But anyway, back to seborrhea, even after the frightening images that conjured up depressing thoughts of lonely, scarred, and flat out violated people, I decided to still give Seborrhea a chance as the random word for this blog, clicked on an about.com link, and began to read. "Have you noticed red or flaking skin around your nose or in your eyebrows?" the site inquired of me. Um, maybe when I have a cold? "How about in your scalp- especially over your forehead or ears? If you answer yes, you may have something called seborrheic dermatitis or seborrhea." Nope. That's all I can take. I am NOT writing a blog on seborrhea. An hour later, I realize I have just successfully written an entire blog on just the subject. I'm not sure if that's an accomplishment, or a cry for help.

Random Word Generators

Have you ever come across a random word generator? Probably not, for while they are described as "random", they do know their place, and don't commonly pop up just anywhere in a Google search.  They do, however, pop up occasionally on creative writing websites, and if you have enough extra time and lack of social activities as me to be browsing these sites, you may at one time have found yourself unconsciously wasting the minutes of your life away, giddily pressing a "generate!" button in anticipation of a new absurd word. Unfortunately, these words are not absurd at all, they're quite ordinary actually, which is why I sometimes question my own sanity when, after receiving the words "lid", "juggle", "phone book", and "aluminum", I still find myself impatient to discover what my next word will be. I call this the bubble wrap phenomenon- the repetition of a particular act that continually results in the same dull outcome in the belief that the next time something more satisfactory will occur. I have also found this phenomenon to apply to bad relationships, dieting, and watching the movie "Napoleon Dynamite". I am quite certain that the first time I came across a random word generator, my reaction was simply, "What in Gods name would require anyone to have any business with a random word generator?" (If you can imagine my subconscious asking that in a British accent, it would add to the authenticity of this reenactment, for my subconscious often asks questions of itself in the British tongue). But honestly, have we grown so dependent upon machinery that we now have electronic devices to randomly offer words up to us? A hundred years ago we would of gotten up off of our lazy bums, walked over to the shelf, and picked up the bell and rang for the butler to read us random words ourselves! Regardless of how needlessly modern this new invention is, it still has room for improvement. Namely, the "random household items" aspect. These random generators think far too much about "knife", "cutting board", and "spatula", which only fuels my creeping suspicion that Martha Stewart and her band of "Better Homes and Gardens" subscribers have an eerily large amount of control over society. But alas, one site, watchout4snakes.com, has taken random word generating to soaring new heights and created the "Random Word Generator (Plus)", which allows you to choose the complexity of your randomly-generated words, ranging in randomosity from "very common" to "obscure". The name of this site alone leads to me trust their knowledge of random. And bring my cat inside for the night. I've decided to use this site to generate ideas for my blogs, so I don't end up writing the same things all the time. And so I do not for God's sake, start writing about my day. So, be ready for some- ohmylordmymomfoundbubblewrap

Creativity

I wanted to start this note out with a definition of creativity. In my mind, I had come up with "Creativity: the often imitated..." and then something about how people strive for and struggle over creativity but can't really obtain it unless they are born with it. Unfortunatly, this definition was never quite hammered out due to a nagging, intrusive, and admittedly immature section of my brain that got distracted by the shiny phrase "often imitated" and ran off with it so that all that I could hear was a booming Robin Williams' voice in my head introducing "the ever-impressive, looooong contaaaaaaiiined, often-imitated, but never duplicated, duplicated, duplicated, duplicated, duplicated, duplicated... CREATIVITY!" This is what happens when you hang on to your childhood for too long. Nonetheless, this definition of creativity may just be the best one we have to date (and yes, I'm aware that the actual phrase ends in "genie of the lamp"). To me, creativity is all of these things; impressive, contained, imitated but never duplicated. There's just something about people who posses creativity that makes our jaws drop and our eyes sparkle. They make us want to become bigger and better, to stand on top of the world as they do and show off our dazzling talents. To be the object of awe. To feel important. As I said, some people are born with it, but that gets me to thinking, the rest of us- what are we? The audience? Aladdin, watching the Genie show off his magic? Then I remember; Aladdin- he was a diamond in the rut. Now I'm thinking that maybe that nagging, intrusive, immature part of my brain that infallibly brings up Disney movies is on to something. Maybe behind that adorable monkey's screech and that princess's arabian bikini-type thing was... no, a real, truthful, honest-to-goodness life lesson? Nah. The only real life-lesson I learned from Aladdin is never assume the bird you're shoving crackers into isn't plotting to murder you and wed your daughter to your royal vizier behind your back. But my point about the creativity thing is this; while we may not all have shiny happy sparkly talents that we can show off to our friends like new silly bands, we all do have some creativity in us. I mean, who said nailing a chem problem on your first try wasn't a creative talent? Or being a good friend? You see, it's not about watching that person show off their gorilla silly band and wishing you had one just as cool. Hell, it's about turning to the kid next to you and convincing him your rubber band is a cyclops with one really big eye. From mars. That eats lava. So here's to all the rubber band kids out there- may you find your own creative talents and run with them. May you be the diamond in the rut. Wait, what am I saying, that phrase doesn't apply here at all.

Speaking of creative people, you all should check out my very own Genie of the Lens, Andrea Faus. She has some pretty amazing pictures, leave lots of comments so she knows just how awesome she is!!>>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrea-faus