I can tell myself all I want to let go of yesterday, but it is much easier said than done.

The other day, I went without eating breakfast, and I felt so sick. I used to be able to do that all the time, and it wouldn’t bother me at all. Geeze, I’m still young. This shouldn’t be happening to me already.

Good times singing Spice Girls with various people, especially my sister and my cousin. I’ve been bumpin’ it in the school parking lot, along with Ricky Martin. The 90’s were so awesome.

To seize today, you must let go of yesterday.

In other words, if you try to move forward while still looking backwards, you’ll just keep bumping into things.

Hm… “to seize today, you must let go of yesterday.” That’s definitely my new mantra. I should try saying it every morning.

Do things really change quickly, or do they change gradually and you just don’t notice it until it hits you all at once?

I wore a polo shirt with a pink tie today. The tie was very loose and the green and blue striped shirt had its collar popped. I borrowed one of my sister’s pink and blue belts that matched pretty well with my tie. It was way too metro for me and probably everyone else too. Yeah, well, that’s the point of experimenting: To find out what works and doesn’t work. And a lot of times, things don’t work.

My dog died.

No, he didn’t. But if I lived halfway across the world from you, how would you know? Back up a second, how would you even know if I really have a dog or not?

Now, let’s say I don’t live in America, but in Iraq. What’s to prevent me from posting complete lies about what’s going on there? How would people know? People link to the lies, propagate them, and their opponents arguments are thwarted by lies.

And so what if the truth comes out. A lie can go around the world before the truth can even get its boots on. The damage is already done.

Alright, stop thinking small. Instead of a weblog, let’s make a newspaper. We brag about the world’s new interconnectedness, but, really, how worldly are people? How many of you have been to other countries? To other hemispheres? To other states?

How do you really know what’s going on in other places? It’s less true than in the past, but it’s still possible to control what people think about places that are far away.

Going back to the newspaper, let’s make one that is full of lies. About people that never existed. About natural disasters that never happened. Who’s stopping us? The freedom of speech includes the freedom to lie.

Okay, there are lies against libel and defaming someone’s character, but who says we have to do that? There is no law against misinformation.

Make the paper internally inconsistent. How many people look at the corrections in a newspaper? Correct typos that never occured.

Create a newspaper of lies and see if the truth will ever catch up.

EDIT: Addendum: And what does the average person know of science? Not much… case in point: evolution, global climate change. Producing fake science stories that reference fake studies. What can anyone do about it?

Found this article, Ninth Circuit Doesn’t Flip Over Use of Coin in Verdict, via Patterico’s Pontifications.

I particularly liked this part:

“‘If you look into the subjective considerations that any juror may contemplate, it’s hard to know the proper place to draw the line,’ he said. ‘Today’s it’s coin-flipping. Tomorrow, in an extreme example, someone might say there should be intelligence tests.'”

I wouldn’t even call that a slippery slope. That’s more like falling off a cliff.

As much as ****** touts itself with things like tsunami relief funds, there is a real culture of apathy at ******. I definitely want to pick an active college.

EDIT: Edited out my school name so they don’t own my soul.

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Didn’t have a great time, overall, at Hayward Honor Band, but it might be just because I’m so jaded after 4 years of it. (And other current personal issues.) Yet, the conductor made the band sound so good, so I feel as if my criticisms would be moot, anyway.

Friday should be cause for rejoice. Yet, these past two Fridays, I have not gotten that “it’s Friday” feeling. It’s not too hard to figure out why, in retrospect. Last week, Thursday was a half day and I went out to lunch. This week, I have had Honor Band yesterday and Honor Band tomorrow and the day after. Thus, I did not get that proper Friday tingle.

However, understanding the problem doesn’t make me feel any better. I need that Friday feeling to break the monotony of the week, just as I need holidays to break the monotony of the year. Geeze, what would the human race do without holidays? We’d be so bored. One Friday, I remember, I just could not stop smiling because I felt so good that it was Friday. It’s disappointing to be deprived of that.

Exacerbating this is the fact that I’m on instant messenger to chat, but no one is online. (Except for the Daryl, thank goodness for him, otherwise I’d be 100% insane.) It makes me feel as if I’m the only loser not having fun right now.

I tried… I really did. Got home, played piano. Just couldn’t get into it. Couldn’t feel anything. So, I tried playing the organ. The added foot action didn’t tickle my fancy either. Already read my usual online comics and blogs. Nothing exciting there. I don’t feel like playing pool either.

My cousins were over, but they were both sick, which didn’t make for exciting enough an evening. Played chess on a whim. Meh. We did play poker, but for no money. I don’t know; I just wasn’t feeling it as great that night. It was still kind of fun. I got screwed in the end… my A-K lost to 5-7 off-suit. I mean, it was good, but it lacked the oomph of other nights. I guess I attribute it to their diseased states.

…

I apologize, folks. You probably don’t really need to hear this. But that’s the State of Shawn right now — bored on a Friday night.

Luckily, there is a remedy. I just need to hang out with someone tomorrow, after honor band. But I fear no one will want to, or they’ll be busy. In that case, I shall just have to kidnap someone.

Least enjoyable Hayward Honor Band ever. However, I’m not going to put any slander and hateful invective on this weblog. All I want to say is that I’m glad UOP isn’t on my list of colleges I applied to.

Poor Neo.

Not my dog… my half-brother’s dog. My sister took the picture.

Analyzing things economically, one can easily predict that China will soon (relatively speaking) be ahead of the US. The US is the supreme power right now, economically, technologically, militarily, but the future will be different. The US will not be as dominant.

I hope to be president one day. However, the world will be a very different place by the time that can possibly happen. Right now, I feel very helpless about the inevitable decline in US power. The challenges to be faced in the future will be very different from the ones faced now. The 20th century belonged to the US, but we are in a new century. And it just seems odd that if I were to lead this country, I would not lead the strongest nation in the world.

So, anything I can possibly think of now will probably be moot because the US is on top now, and I can’t imagine what the future will be like with the US not being the world’s hyperpower. Thought exercises can only go so far. Guess I’ll just have to keep my eye on the present.

Who else but small children would think to make a song about the Bubonic Plague?

Who else but young children would sing a ditty about Charles Guiteau?

And we wonder why there are so many weird grown-ups in the world.

Geeze, some people… Source protection a blogger’s right?.

I really like this pathetic stab: “Because of those issues, Sentelle concluded, even traditional journalists should not enjoy a ‘common-law privilege’ protecting them from grand-jury subpoenas. Thanks a lot, bloggers!” [emphasis mine].

Thanks a lot, bloggers… now we can’t pretend we have a “right” (not a privilege) to threaten national security!

From my math book, “18. (Continuation of Exercise 17) Repeat Exercise 17 with Simpson’s Rule and E_s.”

As soon as I read it, I said, aloud, “How about no.”

Your bit of hilarious stupidity for today: “Hacking” the iTunes-Pepsi promo.

After all, I am The Agnoiologist. (Yes, capital The.)

Whenever someone says, “I love you to death, but…”, the emphasis is almost always actually on death.

For my latest English assignment, I have to take two timed writes I’ve done and combine them into one great essay. Hasn’t my teacher ever heard of alchemy? You can’t just transmute gold from piles of shit, I mean, lead. It’s not taking a rough work and polishing it into a gem… I don’t have the base materials: It’s an impossible transmutation. Fortunately, my brilliant mind is its own Philosopher’s Stone.

The current pop culture trend is disgusting. Ugly baggy clothes that you trip over. Super Bowl half-time shows with indecent exposure. Offensive language is in vogue, as seen with the popularity of reality TV shows such as The Osbournes.

Some consider homosexuality to be one of these freakish new trends, but in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, we find respite from the uncouth popular culture. Queer Eye promotes style and elegance — and general cleanliness. Inspired, my friend Daryl and I have vowed to dress in a manner that is more classy. I am currently wearing ties more often. We want to try vests.

However, classiness cannot simply be restricted to dress — it must extend to attitude. The world is coarse. The greatest novelists of our time are extremely bitter and cynical. These novels are brilliant, but the sarcastic anti-hero of the imitators are becoming hackneyed. Our world and worldviews need refining.

Thus, added to our quest is the intent to make humor more highbrow. The kinds of jokes which will provoke a chuckle from those sporting top hats and monocles. Perhaps not that far, for I’m sure we are too deeply infected with a post-9/11 cynicism, but it should at least be a level higher than what we’re used to. I tried it with a satirical piece with a historical reference.

Here, Daryl attempts his first bit of satire. I thought it was eloquently executed, and I hope you enjoy it.

John Marshall severely outstepped his boundaries in Marbury v. Madison with establishing the principle of judicial review. How can the American people accept this extreme judicial activism — creating new powers for the judiciary not defined in the Constitution? Marshall essentially gives the judiciary the power to overturn laws made by Congress. These are not powers that should be granted to the judiciary. The people did not vote for these judges. Redefinition of a law’s terms is for the legislature to do, not for a judge. Marshall has no right to legislate from the bench.

I hope you will join me in my quest to discredit the process of judicial review.