Haiku

first moon
a  flower lies
cut at the bud

first moon
the haunting shadow
grasps the streetlight

early summer
the windmill's' shadow
disturbs the birds

summer morning
the Black Witch
lands on the crops

tranquil night
on my finger
lands the Black Witch

Haiku Guy

Truthfully, Haiku Guy was pretty good. It was a lot like a book I read previously this year, Portrait Of An Artist, As An Old Man by Joseph Heller. In both books, the main character is striving to become great writers. Except in the case of Haiku Guy, the writer cannot write well at the beginning, but he generally starts to be able to write haiku. In the latter book, the writer can already write. He mainly tries to go and create one final, brilliant book before he dies. I relatively enjoyed the characters in Haiku Guy. It was interesting how Master Cup-Of-Tea was never straight-forward with his lessons, but instead he hid them within haiku. As for Kuro, he was probably my least favorite character. He was always talking about death and despair, and how nothing that anyone did actually mattered. He was such a gloomy person, and I don't exactly like reading about gloomy characters like that in books. I didn't really care much for the way that the writer of the book made it so Buck-Teeth was in the current era, though. It just seemed rather pointless, and I think that could have been removed. The part with the friends of the author going into Buck-Teeth's era should remain, though. Throughout the book his friend's played a rather major role in Buck-Teeth's development, and to remove them would be to remove an important aspect of the book. But the way he kept on talking of how they were people there from future eras, and how they were not of Buck-Teeth's time seemed to ruin it somewhat. It just seemed rather pointless to talk about how Buck-Teeth could never get the girl because she's from the 21st century.

Overall, I would recommend this to a friend. It was rather interesting of a concept, with the main character being a person who wants to write. While at a couple of moments it may have been dull, it redeemed itself with the next section or two before falling into another dull area, for however brief it did. It was a good read and it kept me interested, except for those previously mentioned moments of dullness.

RSA Animate

Yes, what I do when I can get on the computer is searching videos like this. I find them off of a website called wimp.com sometimes, and then i post them onto facebook or link someone to them. What are they? They're someone making speeches at least ten times more interesting and comprehensible. Sometimes people don't really pay attention to the speech, and they will sit for a long period of time and not understand what was just stated. But the people who make these videos make the speeches actually interesting to watch. They go to a white board and draw the images, then speed them up to go along with the speech. It must take an amazingly long time and it must be very challenging to do. I've watched several of these, and each of them have managed to hold my interest. They are, for me at least, one of the best things you can find via youtube. Most people probably don't share this view with me, because I am one of those people who spend my time reading books, some of which are political books. I also take joy in learning about things that have to do with politics or any interesting fact I can find about life. Therefore, I often find myself watching these videos. I hope you enjoy them as well.

Right Wing Donald Duck

My sister showed me this a long while ago, and I find it to be just amazing. I don't completely understand my urge to watch this, or even why I enjoy it so much. It probably has something to do with the fact that it makes fun of Glenn Beck. If you know who Glenn Beck is, it's just a great video. If you don't know who Glenn Beck is, then it's not as interesting as it could be. In short, let's just say that he's a really intense guy that makes people pay money for advice, and when he does he just tells them that they're being too lazy and they need a job. I'm posting this so that other people can see this, laugh at Glenn Beck, and then maybe, just maybe, become more interested in learning about politics and possibly even get more interested in learning about people like this. Also, so that I can state this: Glenn Beck is, in fact, a complete idiot.

History Of The Soviet Union

History Of The Soviet Union to the theme of Tetris. It's awesome.

A Rant

I've recently come to see that I am no longer entitled to hold my own opinion. I can't state that, no, I do not like the Harry Potter series without people trying to change my views, and having them also state how wrong I am. I cannot state that I dislike Linkin Park without people getting angry (even though most of the times that I say it to Jack and Evan I'm aiming to get them angry). I can't stand out in the open and talk of how I do not support the communists, democrats, republicans, or whatever someone's political preferences may be. I can't state that I enjoy ska more than Lady Gaga, Kanye West, or whatever the hell the current fad is. I say that because no matter what the fad is, it is probably bad, as I've seen according to the music that people have come to like. I don't understand it. Why am I one of the people not entitled to opinions? Why do people have the strive to make it seem that they are right and that the other person is always wrong? Why can't people just let others watch, read, and listen to what they want? This is one of the reason I'm misanthropic. We've come to a point where we want to force our beliefs on everybody else. We want everyone to be just like us. We can now be almost completely compared to earlier peoples, who forced you to convert to their religion or they would kill you. We are becoming like the people in the Salem witch trials, who burnt people because they feared their ideas were different. Soon we'll be like the "blond beast." It should be easy to see the reference to the person in that one, and it should also be easy enough to see where I'm going with this. Human nature sucks, because we have the want to control everything. There can't be anything that goes against our ideas, or anything that seems even slightly alien to us. We can't accept anything. What is the world coming to?

Ten Questions

1) What is your favorite book and why is it your favorite?
2) If there is any purpose to life other than living and dying, what is it?
3) What are your political views? Why?
4) If you were in court for something that you did do that held a penalty of seven years in prison and you knew you could get out of the penalty by lying, would you lie? Why or why not?
5) What is your favorite genre of music? What three bands are your favorites of that genre?
6) What major would you like to pursue in college and why?
7) What do you think would be an interesting way to die?
8) Do you believe the world is headed for ruin? Why or why not?
9) Does the world seem to have a sense of banality throughout history? Explain.
10) If put in a position of power, do you believe you would lose control and become corrupted? Why or why not?

Streetlight Manifesto Concert

So last night my sister brought me to a Streetlight Manifesto concert as an early birthday present. It was so amazingly awesome. Three bands played before Streetlight Manifesto were Lionize, Loss For Words, and Terrible Things. The second band caused a small mosh pit to happen, which I just so happened to be stuck in the middle of. As soon as Streetlight Manifesto got on, everyone rushed forward. I was plastered to one of my sister's friends for about a song and a half, barely able to breathe and sort of freaking out. I then started to get pushed around in random spots, generally moving away from the area I was at for the first three bands. At one point I fell, with two other people falling on top of me. Trust me, falling while in a mosh pit is not pleasant. I couldn't get up, and the two people needed to be picked up before someone eventually reached down and helped me up. When I finally got off the ground, I started to get moved backwards in the crowd. I got pushed to the outside of the mosh pit, to a spot where I could finally try to sing and enjoy the music without fearing that I'd die. When the concert ended I was extremely tired, but I found it fun. For taking me to the concert, my sister is the best sister ever.

In Ten Years

In ten years, technology is going to be very advanced. The computer isn't really all that new, and it has already gotten this advanced. Therefore, there will probably be advancements in certain areas that the general populace is interested in. Advancements can only happen when people are supporting them, so with the support needed a certain concept can grow and thrive. There will most likely be more brands of iPods, seeming as how Apple comes out with a new one almost every few months. All that will be required for new iPods are different looks and a few new features, and then everybody will want one. It's always nice to have something that someone else doesn't, because it makes you feel like you are above others. Nano-technology is probably far off from being perfect, though. I don't foresee that becoming very advanced within the next couple of years. There is research going into it and people are working on the idea, but it's still in a sort of primitive stage. It would be very challenging for them to manage to create something so small that it could be transported through your veins as easily as blood in only ten years. Of course, the cell phone industry won't be left behind in the technological revolution. They always need to release new ones, just like the iPod. Except with cell phones there are more companies than just one releasing them and they are in a constant race to beat the other competitors. We already have touch-screen phones, so I don't exactly know where the companies can go from where they already are. Possibly a little chip in the mind, just like in Feed, except it would take very long to actually improve it so that it wouldn't kill the person that had it placed in. And in terms of music, I don't have much of an idea where we're going.   We've changed our musical taste so much over the past one-hundred years. It went from using guitars and drums and basses all the way to using purely electronic music. If I were to have children, they would probably look down on musical taste of ska, because it would be so odd to them. There will also probably be new forms of warfare. There used to be those fancy lines used to shoot the enemy, which then gradually went to guerilla warfare. With the development of new weapons there will be new ways to get rid of the other side. Psychological warfare would probably be more creative, and if the enemy didn't give in to psychological warfare we could just go in and wipe them out. That is, if they didn't have the same weapons we had. But with the creation of new weapons, there would be more threats from other nations, and thus there would probably be World War III. Probably not in the next ten years, but most likely much beyond then. Also, I'm looking forward to the literature. With every new couple of years comes many good books, but there are also the rather bad ones that need to be weeded out. There will always be overrated ones such as Twilight, and hidden deep below the bad ones are bound to be good ones, such as Everything Is Illuminated and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Movies will change too. Earlier movies were a lot more calm, with less violence and action. But as time went on we got more focused on creating movies with as much action as could be fit into a two-hour span, sometimes neglecting the plot line just to get in some good visuals and some good action. We're just like that with video games in that manner. Earlier games, such as Tetris and Snake (probably the best two classic games to ever be created),  were much more mellow than the ones we have out now. Now we focus mostly on creating shooting games, or games where you can go out and slay monsters. I used to buy games mostly for the single-player, seeming as how multi-player wasn't exactly so great back then, and I would play the game for weeks, re-playing it on a harder difficulty each time. Now I buy games not only for the single-player, which I now only play through once, but I mainly get them for the multi-player. I somehow enjoy pretending that I'm a soldier, running around in a fake battlefield and shooting other people pretending to be soldiers. Somehow the seed of violent gaming has gone and been sown deep down into my mind, making it so when i start up a shooter game I get so concentrated on it that hours can pass very quickly, with my mind trying to figure out as many strategies as possible with my mind trying to figure out physics so that I can get that one guy around the corner, who when he goes down will just come back as some other person with the same name and same stuff by some miracle. I often find myself wondering how I can enjoy running around and fake killing people for hours on end, some times in the exact same way as several other people. Now the video games will be more violent in ten years with people loving the blood and gore, which I personally cannot stand. There are going to be more realistic war games, where people will be killing others but not actually feeling the fear of actual death or the stress that war can put you through. And the world has already gotten to such a point that many people don't have any respect for authority or the strive to learn something or the want to become specialized in some sort of trade so that their life won't suck in the future. All they do is talk and get really annoying in classes, not paying the attention needed to the actual class and what they could be learning. Then they go and blame the teacher for not teaching them what needed, when the students themselves weren't actually paying attention. In ten years, that'll probably be a worse problem than it is currently.

So all in all, there might be a few good advancements and a few bad advancements. But from my point of view I see that we are gradually heading on a downward slope to an unescapable pit commonly referred to as demise. I pray we can save ourselves.

Catch-22

Catch-22 was an amazing book. It is by far my favorite book that I have ever read. It took me a while to read it, because I kept having to stop because I had things I needed to do, but after a few weeks I finally got the chance to read it.
It was just an absolutely brilliant book. It was humorous, and had characters that were amazing. I liked the whole concept of Milo Mindbender and his company. Everyone had a share. But no one could collect, because what was best for the company was best for the members.
The way the plot moved along was perfect, and the dialogue was interesting as well. I didn't completely see the ending coming, but I thought that the ending would come in a relatively different manner.
Overall, it was a really good book. It was a mix of war novel and comedy, which I haven't really seen before. It was a new experience for me to read a novel like that, and I loved it. A lot.

When Joseph Heller was asked why he hasn't written anything better than Catch-22, he always wanted to reply, "Who has?" Truthfully, who has?

Picture Prompt

Everything was gone. People and buildings that used to be are now no more. Those that are still here... well, they can't exactly be called "human" anymore.

It all started about a year ago. Everyone was talking about how it was a miracle that the government found out a cure to the common cold. But there were those of us that were wary of this new god-sent cure, and for good reason.
             The few of us that refused it, the ones that were soon called heretics, believed that it was too good to be true. We already had the cure for many types of disease, but trying to cure just a minor cold that could be overcome in a few days was just outrageous. We weren't God, so we didn't have a reason to try and be perfect. We were afraid if we tried too hard we would ruin ourselves. Sadly, we were right.
               Around a month and two weeks after the new "miracle-cure" was released to the public, almost everyone had taken it. Those who hadn't were too far away from society to have access to is, and the others were the heretics.
               It turns out that the cure was actually a virus. At first the virus was hidden inside of the cure, and it was only slightly visible to scientists, so they overlooked it. But that turned out to be a grave mistake.
               About ninety-eight percentage of the population was now sick. They were slowly dying, from something much worse than the common cold. It took about another month for those that were sick to finally drop dead. At least, that was what we believed for the next three months.
               We had created a small civilization, where we had running water and crops. We were happy and content with ourselves. Out of all of the prier population, we were the smartest for not taking the cure. We thought we'd live on like that forever. But everything changes eventually.
               One day they sent me out to scavenge anything that needed to be scavenged. I was supposed to look for anything we could use, whether it was scrap metal, extra gas, or possibly some tools. I was given the van I used every time, with my name painted along the sides in big, red letters, reading: PAUL MORRISON.