As most of you (or at least the ones who talk to me or read this blog thingy) know I'm a college student.  That's been what has for the most consumed my free time when I have it and I hadn't really realized how much until these past few weeks when I took a month off of college to get my shit together to apply to grad school.  First it's been amazing not to have to think that if I sleep in I might not have time to do an assignment or worry that I wont get school done and have time to make dinner etc.  Second it made me realize how much of my time really has been taken up by that money sucking institution that is college.  That doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing it but it does mean that when it all finally comes to an end I'm going to be left standing there going...what now? Sure there is work but I already do that, maybe if I'm lucky there will even be work in the field that I'll shelling out all that money for.  I don't know.

It's a strange thought that hit me a little bit ago and I thought that I would share it.  Maybe I'm missing writing papers or some such. 

I haven't really felt compelled to write for a while obviously, external factors influencing this being working full time and going to school full time not to mention having nothing I felt worth writing about.  However now I do, human nature has been an on going fascination for me and having worked my way through an associates and part of a bachelors in psychology if anything that fascination has increased. I've been reading a book called the Lucifer Effect by Dr. Philip Zimbaro and it essentially confronts head first the darker side of human nature.

Friedrich Nietzche said Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.  What that book does is shows you the potential monster waiting inside yourself.  The experiment it chronicles takes normal healthy ordinary young men and puts them in a situation (The Standford Prison Experiment if you want to look it up) where they are unfamiliar and sure of themselves and their actions and watches what happens.  Bad things happen. Within 5 days.

I consider my self to be an intelligent compassionate caring person and from talking to a variety of people here so do others.  What this book has shown me is that that might not always be true.  In the worst possible situation I could become the monster I fight against.  As a result I've discovered that fear isn't the monster you can't see its the one you can and that monster is living inside all of us.  It may never come out or in the crucible it could be burned away and what remains behind could save us all.  But until we're in the crucible we will never know and that little bit haunts me wondering if I would become the monster or the savior.  

Alrighty so the other night I discovered that my black bikini top has given up the good fight and has begun to decompose as all good corpses do.  Sadly it decomposed a black oily ickiness all over me and it wasn't fun to get off.  This now presents a problem, I have no bikini top to hang out in the chat room in nor one to wear when the weather gets too hot and I'm trying to avoid offending random visitors as well as indecent exposure issues with the police.

Now that the problem has been stated this is the solution I've come up with:  You, the general public get to pick out a new one for me.  I just have a few guide lines for you, it has to actually cover me (sorry no wicked weasel), can't be see through or have animal print since I hate animal print, and at least be or less with a little wiggle room on price if I really really like it.  I suggest that you, the viewer, check out sites like Target, Old Navy, American Eagle, Overstock.com etc etc and then either leave a link or send me an email here saying which one it is you think I should go for.  I'll let it run for a week or so and depending on the number of suggestions I'll narrow it down to a top 5 then do a poll.  Winning bikini will be the one I buy and I'll take pictures etc as well as live in the thing come summer. 

Let the bikini hunt begin!

Ok so I know it's the season for all this are you naughty or nice stuff but that's not what this is about.  This is about my thinking about what I want out of life and the best way to achieve that.  So I've come to the conclusion that I want to leave the world a better place than it was when I came into it.  Minimize my environmental impact, show other people how to it if they want to learn, make people happier so that they too can just brighten the world a little bit.  Basically live the saying 'be the change you want to see in the world'.  I don't want people to love me, worship me etc I just want them to be happier in their life either because I helped them make a choice or just because I was someone who would listen when they needed to talk, for any reason really as long as it's an improvement.  I figure I'm going to screw up off and on and make some people unhappy but maybe in the long run I'll do more good than not.  We'll see.  I hope that you,the reader, take something from this and maybe it'll improve your life a little too.

Ok so I chopped up the following poem a bit but I wanted to get one in about college.  That being said I also wanted to rant for a little bit on the confusion that goes with trying to find a college to go to as well as getting any sort of information about the program you’re interested in: impossible I tell you, just about impossible.  It makes me wonder how on earth people managed to go to school at all before mail was guaranteed and there was not advertising, was it just word of mouth?  Now it’s admissions, applications, paying to apply to a damn school when you don’t even know if you have a chance to get in, why am I paying for the privilege to apply to college? I’m applying to college because I have no money and I’m trying to get an education not because I have a spare -100 to waste! Bah I’m tired of it all maybe I can get a scholarship to apply for college, at least the money would come from somewhere then.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

by Thomas Gray

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,

That crown the watery glade,

Where grateful Science still adores

Her Henry’s holy shade;

And ye that from the stately brow

Of Windsor’s heights the expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among

Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way.      Alas, regardless of their doom, The little victims play ! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond today      To each his sufferings: all are men, Condemned alike to groan ; The tender for another’s pain, The unfeeling for his own. Yet ah ! why should they know their fate ? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more ; where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise.