Eh, forget the other post; I suppose I'll stick with this one for now!
At the moment, I'm finishing up my scholarship stuff. By the way, I'm sorry Mrs. Sims for not getting senior picture in; I was immensely lazy but also I don't care how people view me in 20 years; also, I thought my school picture looked good enough.
Anyhow, we're writing haiku's currently in Creative Writing with Mr. Powell, and I've basically become addicted to them, so I'll go ahead and write a few.

Shimmering waters,
Flowing ever so quickly,
Through the mountain pass.

Sunlight trickles down,
Peppering the forest floor,
I stay in the light.

Winter has arrived,
Everything seems dry and dead,
Yet life thrives to live.

NEW EMAIL

Hey everyone, I'm exporting this blog to put it under my main email now that I'm not using it in school. http://tim-pa.blogspot.com/. Follow Yes! Also, save comments for that one please, as this will be deleted in a month or so.

Sick of It

Alright, sorry world, but I cannot stand the two tards (I'll use this terminology rather than their names). For some reason, a reason that I cannot understand AT ALL, everybody loves them! Is it because they're smart? Is it because they're witty?! Well, if I now live in a world that values only wit and intelligence, then kill me now. I don't know how it's not obvious to others how truly egocentric and narcissistic they really are. Is it because the world only values intelligence or an impression of intelligence that it decides to dig a deep hole in the sand and bury it's head as far under as possible so as not to see the truth? Or maybe the world just values their obvious wealth and that's why it turns a blind eye? After all, money talks, so why shouldn't this be the case here?

I'm going to stop with that part of the subject and focus on the other. I don't loathe the two tards for the reason that they are rich or smart; in fact, I actually really liked them before, until I discovered the real sides of them. Contrary to popular belief, through personal experience I have found that they are both immensely shallow and egocentric, buried up to their necks in their own crap that spews from their mouths like fire hydrants. The only way to justify this anger and frustration I'm feeling is to give an example of the blasphemy. I was on a field trip with one of the tards, and this is what he said to me. He told me about how he doesn't want to focus on his current girlfriend because he keeps thinking of how much better he can do. He then continued to state his HUGE list of standards, which includes but is not limited to beautiful, smart, and "knows how to please a man". Honestly, I'm a guy and most times I would laugh something like this off. When I did, he remained completely serious.
Now, this would've been bad enough, BUT to top it off he even went as far as to say that he expects all of the above as well as complete loyalty from the girl, but that SHE SHOULDN'T EXPECT IT TO BE RECIPROCATED. I didn't know what to say, so on the outside I just smiled awkwardly. But on the inside, I felt something boil up within me, and now a couple weeks later I've felt it again and finally realize that it was blind rage.
On the less severe side, the two tards talk about not what they would do if they were rich, but what they will do when they are rich and have their own corporations like wealth is ascribed to them (again, the ego-centrism). It makes me sick. Even if they had the most remote sense or effort of humbleness, I would be a little more sympathetic, but they they act, it's as if they have gone into the negative on that side. And what make's me possibly maddest of all is the knowledge that any insult I could throw at them to try to keep their ego from drifting further into deep space won't even have the slightest effect on them. The only time that they're EVER the least bit humble towards me is when they're asking me a question that they don't yet have the answer to on a homework assignment. And then, in a dazzling flash, they're back to knowing everything in every subject matter and being the hottest things in the universe.
Like I said previously, it's not their wealth or intelligence that sickens me. I don't think more highly or lowly of someone at all based on wealth, and I support intelligence. It's the center-of-the-universe mindset and the complete narcissism, the complete know-it-all-ism that totally gets to me. It's the total lack of respect for others, especially women, and then the elaborately painted mask they put on for society to try to convince them otherwise. The remind me of The Portrait of Dorian Gray. It's as if their souls are old, bitter, and crusted on a tableau, but still they retain their youth and innocent appearance on the exterior. Like I said before, sickening.
P.S.:
For a while people talking to me about it made me wonder why I wanted to be better than them so badly. I didn't know quite why I wanted to outdo them in every single area possible. But now, after writing this document, I think it's a good vs evil type thing. I think I actually view them as evil and sinful and so all of the good in me just wants to totally triumph over them. I think that's what it is.

I Don't Care

I know I haven't written in this blog very much lately, but I indeed have something to get off my chest, and I no longer care if people will judge me harshly for this because it is my own belief. And when you believe in something, nothing anyone can say will convince you otherwise.
So this belief pertains to religion and Christianity in particular. I believe in everything Christians do, except one piece of the bible in particular, which is supposedly the "most important" book according to all of my Christian friends. That book is Genesis. In my opinion, after reading the entire book of Genesis, none of it makes sense. I just can't believe that God created everything the way it is now in 6 days (took the 7th day to rest), which totally discredits every single scientific theory from plate tectonics to astrophysics to Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Over time, I've come to the conclusion that to believe blindly in only religion is ignorant, but also to believe only in science is also ignorant. You have to find your own medium that makes sense to you. So, for me, my medium as a Christian is to accept all other parts of the bible, which I do believe in, and to think of my own logical Genesis so to speak. Here is what I believe so far:
Eons ago, there was nothing but Heaven, God, and His angels. Eventually, after forever, God become discontent with nothing and so He took the tiniest fraction of His divine energy and through it into the empty space. And so, due to the laws of physics, this energy condensed from gravity and exploded, eventually creating stars, galaxies, and a universe. Over eons, this universe's energy essentially cooled down so much that it once again condensed and blew up, creating a whole new universe. This process continues on forever today.
While all this is happening within the universes, God sits in heaven similar to a programmer, constantly putting in new lines of code to shape our world, although each line of code takes an extremely long time to produce because God's time frames are much huger than ours on Earth. So, first, God wrote the codes to how energy condensed into matter. He then wrote codes to how that matter interacted to make atoms, and how those atoms made cells, how those cells made basic organisms, and it continued down the line all the way into today. Like I said before, His idea of time is much larger than ours, so what we may say is a million years, He may regard as a minute of typing. So this type of evolution would take extreme amounts of time in our sense, as it does in science.
I believe that with each time God wrote these codes for new universes time and time again, He refined them, attempting to perfect His creation. I'm not sure where we tie into this. A part of me thinks that we may just be another brick in the wall, but another part of me believes that we are actually His chosen people because He sent us Jesus Christ to die for our sins. I'm not positive in this area yet.
I apologize if this offends anybody, but at the same time I don't, because people should be accepting of anyone's beliefs and religions, and this belief isn't so radical and far off the mainstream as others. If you've read this, thank you.

Purdue Essay

Q160. Essay--Statement of 250-1,000 words. This essay and all information provided as part of the admission application process will be used for freshman scholarship consideration. Choose one:

1. Describe how a Purdue education will help you achieve your personal and/or professional goals.
2. Envision yourself near the end of a fulfilling, lifelong career and you just published your autobiography. Share the title and introduction.
3. Imagine being able to join a conversation between any two people, living or deceased. Describe that conversation. Identify the people and topic and express what you were able to contribute and/or what you learned.

Respond to only ONE of the above topics in the space provided to the right.

3. As I sat on the firm scratchy sofa awaiting my host and his guest, I marveled at the sense of power and authority that seemed to flow into my veins through the crisp cool atmosphere, as if an IV of splendor and magnificence were preventing me from losing consciousness. Indeed, I did have a good reason to feel light headed and somewhat queasy; it’s not every day that you meet some of the most powerful people to have walked the face of the planet.

                I was tracing the patterns of the ornate carpet with my eyes for the fifth time when at last a man of large build wearing a simple black suit, tie, and sunglasses entered the Oval Office to tell me that the meeting was relocated to the rear patio on account of the beautiful weather. As we left the bright majestic room and filed down the boxy corridors of the White House, I began to feel the same nervous anticipation that I had felt as a boy when about to ask a girl out on a date growing with each step.

                After what seemed long enough to have been hours yet too short for me to have regained my nerves, we reached the large French doors to the back center of the building, beyond which I could make out two figures sipping on drinks and sitting at a large, round, plastic picnic table.

                Upon hearing the opening of a door behind them, the two men turned their heads, rose from their seats, and headed my way. I greeted President Obama and former President George W. Bush very enthusiastically, shaking their hands so vigorously they must have thought I was an assassin trained in bone crushing martial arts.

                They led the way to the table where we all sat down and President Obama had the attendant fetch me a Coke. While we were waiting for him to return, however, the two presidents continued their previous conversation about the economic crisis. I sat, my attention fixed on the two, for some time in silence. President Obama claimed that the best way to lower unemployment rates and fix the economy was to stimulate the businesses, to give them a little ‘defib’ as he called it. He explained how the money would trickle down and how this method was foolproof. George, however, thoroughly disagreed. He immediately expressed his opinion by elaborating on all of the flaws of Trickle Down Economic theory. Bush explained that while the theory worked in a perfect world, this world was not perfect and so the theory couldn’t be completely applied.

                Although I’m a supporter of President Obama, I couldn’t help but agree with George. I noted briefly in my mind how he took a more logical approach to problems as the President took an ideological one. What made Obama different from other politicians, however, was that although he was an idealist, he did not let it hinder him when coming to a compromise with realists.

                While Bush was elaborating about perfect worlds and the flaws of theories, I interrupted him midsentence to stimulate a growing thought in my mind. I asked the two why we couldn’t just raise taxes a bit to solve the economic problem. I recalled how Roosevelt had done so in the Great Depression and how it had paved the way to a huge growth spurt in the national revenue. For Obama’s sake I also pointed out how the president before Roosevelt, President Hoover, had attempted to treat the broken economy with stimulus money and how it had only made the situation even worse. Both presidents at the table commended me for my knowledge of U.S. History, but Obama retorted, saying that the reason for the huge economic growth after the Great Depression resulted largely from disorder in Europe and East Asia, which boosted nationalism and made people more industrious on the home front.

                Both Bush and I agreed, but Bush claimed that even had the war not occurred, economic growth in America would’ve rocketed skyward anyway. As the two men talked on, I sat quiet for the majority of the rest of the afternoon, only taking in information as a computer would data streaming from the internet. Finally, towards the end of my visit, I compiled my mental data and spoke once more. I told the two that I saw a similarity with all of the methods we discussed, and that it was that none of them worked. They sat perplexed. I continued on despite their dumbfound faces by asking why we didn’t just try something new. Immediately they began insisting that there was nothing practical left to try and that the key lied in one of the methods that they had tried and failed with or dismissed many times before.

                On the silent ride home, I pondered everything that had happened that night and everything I’d heard. I had finally come to a conclusion by the time I arrived home. The American people have some very qualified and educated people holding office in their government. After immense thought, I concluded that although much education can bring much knowledge, it doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom. Many of the politicians in our government have a lot of knowledge to bring to the table, but that knowledge isn’t worth much if one doesn’t know how to make the most of it for the best possible outcome.

The only reason I ended it the way I did is because it asked what I contributed/ learned, and because I didn't contribute much in the dialogue (because I was just going with the flow when writing it), I decided to add a little lesson to it that I learned. I was also running out of words.

All In A Day's Work

Well I'm not quite sure where to begin. I guess I'll start from when I woke up, since technically that was the conscious beginning of my day. So, at approximately 7:30 A.M., I rose from my warm comfy bed to meet my chiming alarm clock with a solid fist. Actually, I didn't use my fist; as always, I placidly got up, stumbled across the room, and slid the switch to off.
The reason it's on the other side of the room is so I'm not tempted to just reach over, switch it off, and fall back to sleep. Logical, right? Well just because something is logical doesn't mean it works. I've developed a sort of subconscious method over the past couple years for dealing with the noisy nuisance, which basically consists of me rolling out of bed, silently walking to the alarm clock, turning around (I'm not sure which way, counter clockwise or clockwise, but I'm sure there's a specific direction I turn), and sliding back into bed. By the time I'm fully awake later in the morning, I can hardly remember turning the thing off.
Luckily, this morning I actually stayed out of my bed. Anyway, for the sake of time, I'll just cut to the chase. I mowed 3 lawns today in 6 hours, so that averages out to about 2 hours per lawn. Overall, I earned close $56.25, which isn't bad considering the amount of time it took to mow. Subtracting gas from that, I'd say I had a net profit of about $50 give or take. So overall it was a good day though exhausting.
I learned a couple key things as well:
1. I will never again, no matter how hot it is, wear denim shorts when mowing. Whenever I got to weedeating grass around rocky driveways or parking lots or even just the highway, the little fragments of rock and probably some small one's of glass would launch up at my legs like shrapnel from a bomb, with about the same effect to scale; my legs are now covered with little red scabs. Yeah, granted it probably sounds like it was pretty painful, and it was! I just sucked it up so I could finish the jobs, taking satisfaction in my resolution to never ever wear shorts again. From now on, it's jeans all the way.
2. The harder you work, the more your work is appreciated, especially if the boss is nearby. I was working on one of the lawns while the owner was in his house, checking the mail, and after he noticed I was working very hard he gave me an additional 5 dollars to the already generous pay of 30 dollars for the yard. He told me, "Go get yourself a drink." I'll be honest; I did not get a drink, namely because I need every cent I can get and I'm pretty tight most of the time. The gesture, however, was still greatly appreciated by yours truly.

Well that's basically all I really learned. I will note, though, that while I was on the second lawn the skies got pretty dark. In fact, a few droplets of rain tapped my knees while I was riding the mower, hastily trying to get the yard down before the buckets began falling. The rain never came. Miraculously, as I was finishing the mowing and getting to the weedeating, which I could do rain or shine, the clouds parted above and I was greeted by warm rays of sunlight.
Mowing the third yard was somewhat serene and peaceful. Although it required a lot of work, actually more intense work than the previous two lawns, it was kind of bliss. Half of the sky was blue and half was white with a tinge of gray to it. The clouds hung heavy in the atmosphere, seemingly filled with H2O but unable to drop it because they weren't unified enough. They hung in the sky like the heavens, with the sun casting shadows from an angle such that the clouds cast shadows on themselves. Despite the din of the mower, every time I did a sweep in the direction of the sun, I felt as if I were a lost soul returning to his homeland after a long journey; weary but calm, content, and at peace once again.
My next post will be of the essay I plan on submitting for admission to Purdue!

Another Blog

http://timpaustin.blogspot.com/ Another blog of mine! This one's devoted to art, music, and literature.