Update

Finals went well and we won a thriller monday night culminating in the student section rushing the court jumping up and down with all the players. Great game, on to the Elite Eight in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Finals, March Madness, and Slamming James for No Reason Except Jealousy

So this upcoming week is finals week here at SPU. I've got a bio and politics final on monday, and a take home final due tuesday for my ucor. This past week I was also accepted into University Scholars, which is the honors program. This means a couple things - first, I'll probably start blogging more because I'll have a lot more reading and papers to write so I'll need to procrastinate and distract myself more. Second, my U-Core and Biology classes I unfortunately took this quarter are now almost worthless, but I won't have to waste future time on common and exploratory curriculum. Instead, I can work towards the honors curriculum and my (probable) majors of political science and philosophy and, hopefully if I have room, a minor of sociology, but that may be far too ambitious.

Enough with my life, lets move on to something interesting. Our Seattle Pacific men's basketball team is in the midst of a great season, and, as an Orangemen (6th West Ashton tradition), I have a front row view. As GNAC (Great Northwest Athletic Conference, "gee-nack") champions and the top seed in the West, SPU was awarded host of the men's west regional. This is the third time its happened in the past 41 years. Anyways, the Big Dance works a little differently in Division II basketball than in Division I. In DII, there 8 regions instead of four, and after winning your region you advance to some centrally located host city to play in the Elite Eight, instead of the Final Four. Well after victories over Central Washington and Cal State Bakersfield last night and tonight repectively, we're on to the sweet sixteen, the regional championship, against our archrival Western Washington at Seattle Pacific's Royal Broughm Pavillion, and I am pee-my-pants excited.

Action shot of the Orangmen at work (from left) Sam Delay driving the bus to V-town, Geoff "Jersey" Jacobs basking in the ecstasy of the three, Jake "Peer Advisor" Buter knew it all along, and David "Slutbag" Van Hofwegen peeing his pants for Dustin Bremerman's three ball

Dustin Bremerman makes me weak in the knees. Not only does the silky-smooth guard sort of look like an attractive James Harskamp, he's money from trey-land. Though not as flashy as GNAC player of the year and point guard Tony Binelli or as dominating as center "GNAC Shaq" Robbie Will, Dustin effortlessly throws up 20 point performances. Plus, his middle name's Tyrel - ya know, like the White Rock star who set the RCMP tourney scoring record because James was guarding him.

That's all kiddies, I'm back to the books and looking forward to an intense Monday night.

Edit: James likes girls.....and he plays World of Warcraft.

Thugged out

So I'm just innocently travelling the harsh streets of downtown Seattle - Ya know, finding homes for the homeless, families for the orphans, and food for the hungry - the usual Tuesday night for me.

Unfortunately, an evil neo-Nazi drug dealing Satan worshiping corporate thug was out on the s ame street stealing these helpless people to make money and somehow increase global poverty through torturing them. I was just like, "Dude, you can't do that."

And he was just like, "What?" and then he shot my in the face - thus, the bloody brow. Then, I ate some spinach and convinced him to convert to Christianity through non-violent protest. Happy day.

...and Andrew thinks I'm anti-Semitic

A couple things: if you're looking to add something to your reads, check out My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok - a powerful novel about the battle of religion, family and tradition intertwined against inner impulses, gifts, and expression - emotional and profound. It's one of those stories that just gets you, ya know? impacts you in ways only really good stories can. This one was special as well because I think most people who grow up in religious families can relate Asher in some way.

Lost is seriously scaring me - I feel like the creators are on the verge of losing control. Such a brilliant show with so much potential, and there's a very good chance it'll all go down the tube. I blame the Bush Administration.

Third, expect a long post about Alexis de Tocqueville and my future soon. Also, I'll finally get on getting some pictures out on here.

Pax,
DMV

Doesn't matter if you're Canadian....

Dear Friends, I just took action to protect our National Parks, will you join me? The Bush administration has launched yet another stealth attack on America's most treasured wild places - our National Parks. Their plan would dramatically reduce protections for our parks,which could lead to increased off-road vehicle use, additionalcommercialization, smog and other forms of degradation. These changes could erode the look and feel of places likeYellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. We only have until February 18 to weigh in on this outrageous proposal - click thelink below to submit your comments now.
http://action.wilderness.org/campaign/nationalparks?source=200602_adv_nptaf

From the vast depths of the Grand Canyon to the majestic peaksof the Grand Tetons, America's National Parks are breathtakingnatural treasures. For almost a century, our National Parks havebeen protected by the strictest standards designed to safeguardtheir historical, archeological and natural value. Without any justification or explanation for changing the wayour parks are managed, the new proposal would fundamentally weaken key protections and dilute the Park Service's coremission of conservation.

For generations Americans have been confident that despite shifts in political climate, our National Parks will remainprotected and pristine. We cannot let this administration be the first to abandon the spirit of conservation that has been thecornerstone of the park service mission.We still have a chance to prevent this dangerous surgery on ournational parks, but only if you take action quickly. The deadline to submit comments on this proposal is February 18,2005, so please don't wait - click here to submit your comments now!
http://action.wilderness.org/campaign/nationalparks?source=200602_adv_nptaf
Thank you for your help.

Oh wasted day

Have you seen my creativity? I think its hiding with my honesty, or out back taking a hit with my responsibility. I want it to know I'm ready for it now again, hopefully with more maturity this time. And, yes, I promise to feed it more Straylight and the Ros.

why you'd want to live here

Hey, check it out, I'm blogging again. That must mean....you're right, I do HAVE a quiz, a midterm, and a paper tomorrow. In any case, I'm in a reflective mood. I just got back from Northgate mall where I saw my parents (and had unsatisfying teriyaki - shrimp, of course) who are probably in Tacoma right now in a U-Haul trucking it down to NorCal. Yes, my dad is finally moving to Walnut Creek. Its real, and that realization is somewhat invoking. What emotions it invokes, I don't really know, but the state I'm in right now (aside from Washington o' course [badda ding]) can only be described as emotional. I miss my dog, my house that'll be there until april-ish, my church. I miss the Canucks being able to beat the Blues. I've always maintained that I wasn't moving, only my parents are, but it still feels like a significant event in my life. I have had two homes (Seattle and Vancouver) for the past 4 months or so, and now, after my mom leaves in aprilish, my parents won't be in either one. I'll (hopefully) live in Vancouver this summer, but will I ever again?

I think the North American family can sorta generally be divided up into categories- people who stick around in one spot for like 19 generations and tend to be the solid backbone, we're-always-here people of the church and we-have-a-super-tight-extended-family. And then you have families like my family: the my-youngest-son-is-about-to-be-a-citizen-of-three-different-countries families (werd up, applying to get Canadian citizenship soon to go along with the other two). There's benefits to moving around and getting all these different experiences for sure, but there's something really sad about it. After this year, how often will I see my immediate family? I'll probably see my parents 2 to 4 weeks out of the year, Sara maybe a week or two (she's off to law school in either Virginia or one of four spots in Cali), and Katia + Micah (who leave Grand Rapids next year to God knows where) probably two weeks every two years - and that's most likely how it'll be for the rest of my life. That's how it was for my parents.

Anyways, I'm off to learn about VO2 Max and consititutional democracies, then write a paper on why Samuel Huntington is a warmongering racist and Mexican immigrantion shouldn't be impeded.

much love
david

P.S. props if you got the death cab reference in the title. And yes, know that song is about LA, not North Cal, but it was a good effort, eh (gotta practice for Canadian citizenship eh)

Almost two months later....

I figured since Stewie would break up with me if I didn't blog today, I figured I throw a bone to all of ya and dust off the blogging machine after a two month absence. Two months, eh? I'll be brief...
So after throwing together an insanely high number of hours studied for finals, I pulled together some solid grades achieving the sexy 4.0 gpa I had been lusting after all quarter. What's sexy about a 4.0? Welp, I've been finding myself wearing glasses and knee-high socks, reading fantasy books, talking with a lisp, and playing World of Warcraft. My new role model is now Neil Goldman. Sexshy. This quarter I have two really boring classes (arts and christian community and biology of human motion), and one really interesting one (intro to politics), so I'm finding myself less motivated.
Alright, I need to go find something else for me to do to keep procrastinating from writing a small politics paper, but I promise each and everyone of you I'll be back with more interesting gossip (you'll never guess who has gotten fat). Enjoy the commercials.

Things you should know about me but maybe don't

I'm not a terrible volleyball player for spending the past five years hating the sport, my roommate is Jesse Van Hove's art student twin, I'm a half-assed vegetarian (I eat fish), I'm Seattle Pacific University Flag Football B-League Intramural Champion, my dad is moving to his hometown of Walnut Creek, CA in January with my mom to follow later in the spring to pastor his sister's church, I secretly hope my sister Katia and bro-in law Micah move to Seattle area next year (but they won't) while I hope my sister Sara goes to UC-Davis or UC-Berkeley law schools (I know, she's brilliant) so she's close to my parents and I won't feel obligated to visit as much, both my ears are pierced, I am double majoring in two of the following (maybe): philosophy, journalism/communications, sociology, political science, english, I'm really frustrated with the Dolphins and Hurricanes right now but the Seahawks are thriving, Dwayne Wade>Dontrelle Willis>Nick Saban(loss to Browns on Sunday makes me nervous)>Ronnie Brown> Miguel Cabrera (attitude problem)>Kyle Wright in the pantheon of the future of Miami sports, I haven't seen the last two episodes of Lost, Death Cab show receives a 8/10, I had a dream that James and I did something illegal, and I kinda like sports.

Vegetarianism #3 (also, sucking at Halo but not sleepy is condusive to blogging)

So again, in attempting to reply to all the comments, I found my self with a really big paragraph so I figured I'd post it up here where everyone would actually read it:
Adam, numbers : From Good News for All Creation (Kaufman and Braun, 2002): "Yet worldwide in 1998, 37 percent of all harvested grain was fed to animals being raised for slaughter; in the United States that figure was 66 percent. Meat wastes between 66 and92 percent of grains’ proteins and calories." They have their figures sourced from different journals and books. When writing the posts, I quickly grabbed my figures from a U of Penn website I pulled off google, so that's how i got the water numbers and the 70% compared to the 66%. As for the amount of people starving to death a day, that's the figure I've heard several times in the past year, somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 thousand daily. I just briefly browsed around and got 16 thousand children dying a day of hunger related diseases from bread.org, 1/3 of the world is well fed, 1/3 is under fed, and 1/3 is starving according to the World Health organization, and according to thinkglobal2005.org, 10 million people died in 2003 of starvation, which comes to about 28 thousand a day. Likewise, according to makepovertyhistory.org, 30,000 children die of poverty related causes. So I think I was thinking of poverty, not just starvation, for my 30 - 40 thousand number. But my point remains the same, way way way too many people are dying for us to be so careless with a essential to life resource.
Secondly, Dan - the whale comment about Free Willy was intentional at the end, but good catch.

And since I have nothing else to add, I may as well began to ramble on about my economic justice paper, too. The premise of this paper is that billions around the world live in unjust conditions while David chillaxes ('99, what) with his 20 t-shirts, six pairs of shoes, and lots 'o cable tv up with the affluent west. Basically, I'm saying in this paper that we all have a duty to provide far more aide than we currently now give, and the failure to give such aide is akin to murder. Hopefully, just because I'm a major hypocrite (I've failed to even reach a basic 10% tithe the past 4 working years of my life) on this topic (throwing out the ad hominem on myself before all y'alls drop it on me) doesn't mean the arguments I'm trying to make are invalid. By the way, I don't really feel like searching up a bunch of quotes about how x number of people are living on y number of dollars a day while zee (not zed) number of billionaries have more money than n number of countries. But those numbers do exist, they aren't disputed, and they are staggering. Anywho, listen to me ramble, yo:

Lemme first establish some points crucial to my argument: Every person has a right to a healthy life, which includes a helluva lot of other things (shelter, clothing, etc) . Every person has right to his or her own property and to decide to do with such property as he or she wishes unless it compromises human freedom, dignity, or anything along those lines. The right to life of every human being far outweighs any property rights of any amount of persons. In other words, if I am able to destroy a hundred thousand hummers owned by a hundred thousand different people to save one human life, I have a directy duty to that one person to do so. If I take no action to save that one life, I have committed a moral wrong - something akin to murder. Maybe not murder exactly, but my point here is inaction resulting in a violation of a basic human right in almost equal to action resulting in a violation of a basic human right. Follow me? AKA, not preventing (if able without any harm to self and others) someone from killing someone is almost as bad as shooting someone in the head yourself. Ace? See where I'm headed with this?

We have the ability to satisfy so much essential need in the world, but instead, we satisfy our own superficial material needs and desires. Example: "To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US $13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year. " (http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm) Dude, I have three bottles of axe sitting on my dresser right now. Who the hell needs three? People are dying, but I like smelling good. What my actions say is, it is more important for me to smell good for a couple months than it is for a fellow human to have food for a month or whatever the h-bomb $25-30 will getcha. This is a grave moral wrong committed by a helluva lot of people (you and me included) that is akin to murder. People die, I spend hundreds of dollars a year on vanity. Now I'm going to stop writing and you're going to stop reading, and we're both going to go do something else and forget about this injustice and inequality we daily contribute to because, quite honestly, it is very uncomfortable, depressing, and guilt inducing. I'll hopefully have the stones to return to this later, and hopefully, maybe I can grow up and help someone or something. And I don't know, maybe you and I both can start thinking about how maybe we shouldn't go out to eat, maybe we shouldn't pick up the new broken social scene album, or buy that dwayne wade poster, or that dwayne wade jersey, or that dwayne wade shirt, or more make up, or more perfume, or more shoes, or, and this one is directed right at stewart, more man-thongs (or any sort of thongs). Anyways, I've become incredibly cliche so i'm going to run and hide in the bathroom stall where the poster of hilary duff watches me poop until I feel original again. Love.

Vegetarianism continued

I originally started this as a comment for the blog before this, but it got long, so I figured I through this as a post and add the social aspect to my vegetarianism:

Okay, so I think most of you missed my point about why I eat fish. I don't believe fish are fully concious, and don't truly suffer. If you reread my post, you'll notice that I mention conciousness as necessary for moral standing. Without conciousness, an organism lacks the ability to fully suffer. Thus, I eat fish, or plants for that matter. Secondly, James, I would very very strongly disagree with your statement that a purpose of animal is to be food. I strongly believe, and I can give you tons of scripture to back this up, that creation was not created for us, but for God. Cows, dogs, monkeys, chickens, and Free Willy do not all exist for our enjoyment and to satisfy our tastes but for God's enjoyment and glorification. However, I also believe that, if necessary for our survival, God gives us his blessing to eat his animals. But it is not necessary for our survival. We eat meat solely to satisfy a taste. Thirdly, Adam, Free Willy was a dolphin (orcas are actually dolphins, not whales), not a fish. So I wouldn't eat Free Willy either, cuz he's pretty concious. Plus, you totally see him suffer in the movie: like when he gets really popular and everyone's banging on the windows under water? dude, poor whale.

Now for my huge social justice reasons for not eating meat besides fish: something like 35% of the world's and 70% of America's grain goes to feeding livestock. Thirty to forty thousand people starve to death every day. The grain consumed by such animals a year could go to feed 800 million people a year. Likewise, it's also wasteful of water: the amount of water needed to produce a pound of meat is fifty times that necessary to produce a pound of wheat. This is a gross mismanangement of a needed resource. Secondly, meat consumption is a primary reason for environmental devastation. It greatly contributes to deforestation: "the primary reason for the destruction of rainforests in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, is to provide grazing land for cattle, virtually all of which goes not to the poor in these third world nations, but rather is exported to wealthy countries like the United States" (Mohr).

Anyways, I'm out to 1 AM Thai, later.

I hate white people

"So at SPU, in the autumn quarter of your freshman year, you have to take a University Seminar. They have USem's (as the cool kids call them) on all sorts of things, and mine is on ethical contreversies. The first issue we studied in the class was animal rights, and the one were just kicking up is abortion. I had never really given much thought to animal rights before, though I was always all for protecting the environment. But after some soul searching and really deep thought on morality a couple weeks, I decided I couldn't justify myself eating the flesh of conscious animals anymore. So for the past three and the half weeks, I have not eaten any meat with the exception of fish.

What's your reasoning behind this?, you ask inquisitively. The answer is multi-fold, I respond vehemently. And yes, this is just an excuse to say vehemous."

Hey look, kids, its a draft I wrote on October 17th! Eerie times.... Anyways, I guess I haven't really discussed my relatively new found vegetarianism. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that something has moral standing if it can suffer. Something can suffer if it has conciousness. Cows, pigs, chickens, and monkeys, among other things, have conciousness. Therefore, cows, pigs, chickens and monkeys have moral standing. Thus, they have a right to life. I, too, have conciousness, and have a right to life. However, meat is not a non-basic need for me, as I can live a healthy and nutritional life without it. Therefore, I do not eat cows, pigs, chickens, human babies, monkeys, and other things with conciousness. There are, of course, other social justice reasons to go along with this, but I don't really feel like talking about those reasons yet.

Anyways, another thing I originally wanted to talk about when I started my post, and hence titled it 'I hate white people', is slavery. Duude, slavery is terrible. The human race has done some bullshit bullshit things to eachother, and it really breaks my heart unbelievably. I don't really want to get into this much about the book on Frederick Douglas or anything else I'm reading because its super depressing and I'm not in the mood to feel all heavy and that jazz. However, one thing I'll probably be mentioning later and that I'm writing a term paper on is economic justice. And, yes, half the reason I'm mentioning this now is because I'm giving Bucholtz a chance to start researching and preparing and doing whatever he feels he needs to give him the slightest chance in the storm to come. I'm also disappointed with the lack of abortion arguments. YOU'RE GOING DOWN BOOSH. much love, later

Dece

So I'm back blogging, for the sole reason that this preferable to studying for my psychology test on Friday. Speaking of tests, I had two biggies on Monday, which wasn't very nice because some Kira girl was down for the weekend from Friday morning til Monday afternoon. But, considering the context, I laid 'em downizzle. The tests, I mean, not Kira.

But yeah, my life is fitting together killer ace. I'm enjoying my classes, but I still don't really know what I'm going to major in at all. Right now I'm having this huge passion for people, since I'm currently in Psychology and Sociology intro, which both are all about studying people, but with different approaches. Psychology focuses on the individual, where as sociology focuses on societies and cultures in general. Woo-hoo, y'all. Woo-hoo, indeed. Right now in my ethical contreversies class we're hitting up abortion. (My take: fetus not quite a person, abortion not murder, should not be prohibited by the state for a lot of reasons, yet still morally wrong in most circumstances). I'd love to talk more about this issue with any of you (Bucholtz) if you wanna hit me up.
College social life is something special, fo'sho' (but leaves me pretty deprived of sleep), Seattle is a special city and I love being in such a super urban campus with so much to do everywhere, and intramural sports (playing saturday morning football and monday night volleyball) are a real good time. So yeah, life is fun and good, which is nice, and not always true, so it's nice to enjoy it while it lasts while trying to remember what's really important and happening in the world. Life is full of beauty and pain everywhere, and I think it's just as important to remember the pain happening all over the place while immersed in the beauty as it is to remember all the beauty while immersed in the pain. But yeah, I'm talking like I have any idea what I'm talking about, which I really don't, ever.

Ooo, good story: So I met this girl Andrea from Linden, Washington about a week and half ago. Well, we're hanging out for awhile and it comes out that she has a lot of family from Denver, which is cool because I have a lot of family from Denver, since that's where my mom grew up. Well, it turns out our grandparents go to the same church and her dad and my mom went to the same high school about the same time. The next morning, during chuch listening to a sermon by a pastor who I swear is related to Robbie Kim somehow, it suddenly hit me that during the summer of '04, my mom went down to a funeral in Linden of a man who she went to high school with and whose parents were a very good family friend. Well it turns out that was Andrea's dad who passed away and our families have all these connections together, which was pretty cool. Since then, her and I have gotten to become really good friends which is awesome, and I think it was really cool for her to meet some people who know her dad and all these super inspiring stories about him. My heart goes out to all of the people I've met who have lost a parent, but, for the most part, these friends are some of the strongest, most mature, and inspiring people I've ever met. So thank you, friends, for your impact on me and I want to know I think about all y'alls a lot. When something super hard and difficult happens in your life, you can either let it make you or break you, and I've met a lot of people who've let their circumstances make them instead of break them. Inspiring stuff.

Back so slack.

I'm tired....need food. I was intending on blogging on my oh-so-fun weekend, but I'm way too lazy. Plus, the Seahawks are almost on. Music update: Coheed show was amazing, like always. Really looking forward to Copeland tomorrow night. Oh so fun.

catch for us the foxes

Okay, I swear, I have tried to write two posts since my last blog. Each time, I wrote a single paragraph, left from the computer, genuinely intending (really) on returning to complete with more beautiful writing only to forget completely about blogging or anything to do with that. Unfortunetly, these lost paragraphs have disappeared into the hidden mountain of lost cyber material. But, to dissuade all rumours (I debated for awhile whether or not to include the 'u'), I would like to make two things very clear: a) I am not dead (though to all 'da fly hunnies hoping for some sweet david love I might as well be ;)), and b) Seattle, and spefically SPU, is very very very ace.

So to be very brief: my classes are good, my floor and my dorm is good, my job pays good, the scene is so so good (going to Coheed and Cambria and mewithoutYou tonight), my relationship with kira is good, my new people are good, my vegetarianism is good, and, as always, I look so ridiculously good. Much love from Sixth Ashton, I'll be back very very soon.

Edit: oh, and Brennan is good. He's still not down with pushing the beds together, but I'll win him over soon enough.

Dag

So I'd like to apologize for the complete lack of blogs the past couple months. I'll get rolling once I'm in Seattle tomorrow. I'm basically packed: four boxes, three bins, and two suitcases = all the things belonging to me that I can afford to have with me, plus a snowboard and golf bag of clubs to come at a later date. It's refreshing to know that if I forget something or want to impress my sexy roommate Brennan with something from home, I can come grab it in a week.

Speaking of Brennan, I'm convinced I'm going to be super disappointed with him. He's just been so hyped up with all my friends. Basically, its at the point where if he's not an incredibly flaming Mexican immigrant or an insanely homophobic redneck, it'll be disappointing.

There are a couple long, semi-serious blogs in me right now, but it's not 3 in the morning, so I'll save them for later.

Dave from Burnaby

War new Sigur Ros, war new Coheed and Cambria, war new girlfriend, war new Dolphins Coach Nick Saban.

Alright, I'm back from the dead to end the run of cheesy posts. They trippin'. People come, people go; life is living. I'll be back when I'm less lazy to give you something substantial.
Werd out.

starved for your attention

I want you to weep for me.
I want to weep for you.

I want selfishness to die.
I want humanity to never lose empathy, if it's still alive.

I want hypocrisy to die.

it's official

at 4:14 AM, I really want to drink chocolate milk and watch Wes Anderson movies with Robyn.
then commit really (scene mutual lover suicide)

Understanding in a Car Crash

"We don't stand a chance in this threadbare time." - Thursday, Understanding in a Car Crash

Felt that song is a little appropiate, considering the events of last night. I was driving with Jeff to go pick Kira up from her work at Earls when a car pulled out from a parking lot right into us. I veered left to avoid him, but he clipped us (corner to corner contact apparently) sending us skidding to the right, with all our momentum still moving forward. Well, beautiful ol'inertia keeps going as my mother's focus barrel rolls one complete turn, forunately leaving us right side up on our tires. This happened in a span of roughly 3-5 seconds. Fortunetly, Jeff and I were completely fine, kinda in shocked, kinda freaked out about what could've happened, kinda super stoked that we just executed a flawless barrel roll. The car is most likely totalled, and we had to spend a few hours strapped on stretchers with huge neck braces staring up boring ceilings - all precautionary measures. I got a couple scratchers here or there, am still digging out glass from my hair, and probably will be fairly sore in the morning, but other than that, am 100% healthy. I'm really choked that tomorrow's trip to Seattle to visit SPU, shop, and catch (fun to pun) a Mariners game is delayed though. But, with perspective, it's no biggie whatsoever.

Plenty of what if questions pop into my head - what if I was driving my pickup like usual instead of my mom's Focus (kinda random decision), what if the accident had occured after we picked up kira, with her or jeff in the back seat, what if I had been speeding, what if one of us was seriously hurt or worse - and I know we were really fortunate.

Lately, I've been almost bitter(not really the right word) about the privileges I've been gifted for no other reason except for being the result of the situation I was born into. So many things have just been handed to me on a silver platter. I feel somewhat resentful. There is so much suffering, so much pain, so much horror in the world. Why do i get so many gifts? My Grandpa Van Dyke always says that to those that have been given much, much is required, ya know, the whole Spiderman shpeel. I definetly know that pressure to make the most of my oppurtunities and help others. But the world is so unfair: I think 80-90% of who you are is determined by factors you can't control at all. Welp, chalk the gift of safety and health tonight up to these uncontrollable factors. Just another gift that adds on to responsibility I have to really make a difference in solving the problems of society's problems. This is just another reminder that 15-10% I control about the person I am better be full out, just givin' 'er, hardcore helpful and loving to this world. That's so much more important than anything else: my enjoyment, my temporary happines, my desires. After all, the world needs all the love and help it can get.

I hope God is real. He needs to be real.