Daily Entries Archived from August August 18th, 2002 Well, it's August already... Jeez... where do the months go? Hmmm... I sound like I'm all old and stuff now. Well, I do have something of a beard now, so maybe I am just a little bit? I've been having pretty good times lately, sitting around the farm, helping my dad, and working with my brother, engaging in death defying experiences up on the roof. For stories... Maybe I'll slide them in later, I have Jamie to tell stories to now, so maybe I won't have to type them all out for you? So I'm trying to think of stuff to say, but I'm not really in a chatty mood right now. Jamie just left after her second experience on Silvermist Dairy, so it's quite depressing with her leaving. Maybe I'll write more tomorrow, or tonight, I'm going to try and pencil in a few minutes every day again, working on this page, so feel free to stop by and take a look over my thoughts. Other than that, take it easy!!!!! August 19th, 2002 Another day gone, just like the rest. Nothing will ever be like last night again. I'll never know what it's like to not know what Monday, August 19th will be like again. That's what's wierd about the past. It's just gone, forever etched into the memory banks just like I'm etched into Jamie's memory banks, synchronous with Def Lepard, or however you spell it. So the same things happened today that happen every day. Get up early, work in the barn, go and help my brother, come home, work in the barn. It's strange how everyday is just so similar, like, why do I get up, when I can predict what the day is going to be like. It's probably just the little interesting things that just seperate this day from the day before, and the day in the future. Anything interesting today, not really. I'll find something though. I hate how Matt is always so hard ass when his girlfriend is around. He's so dumb, and trying to grow up so quick. Why would anyone want that. I mean, I'm sure people have the same goals... find someone important, get married, buy a house, have a good job, but that's over half of your life. Why not enjoy each day for what it's worth, and not try and get to the next step so quick. You know, have good times now, do what you are supposed to do when you are young, be irresponsible, spend lot's of dough on stupid things, and get older when you get older. For me, there is no rush to be 22 and trying to live like I'm 28. I'll live like I'm 28 when I'm 28. Not trying to say that I'm going to be immature all the time, and never grow up, because I do. I want to have a good job, and I realize that things I do now affect my future and all that, but I'm not afraid to make mistakes. I'm not afraid to let the lady of my dreams run away anymore. I guess sometimes I just think everything will just fall into place. Not that I don't have to put any effort into anything, but I'm not going to deliberately put any extra effort into anything. Get it? Unless, maybe what I'm supposed to do is put extra effort into everything, but that wouldn't be me, so I'm not going to do it. Am I'm overanalyzing everything again? Probably. Although overanalyzing can be quite fun, it can be quite frustrating. Mostly because everyone seems to get so pissed off when I do so. I don't mind it, I just wish that people could accept the fact that I break stuff down so much, wait, I probaly just need someone to train me not to overanalyze so much. See, maybe I'm just like a wild animal, and I need to be tamed. I've always had to figure everything out myself. I mean, I ask people questions on everything, but I still have to rely on myself too much. I never have anyone to take care of me. I guess I've had both though. I've had the overprotective side, which was my grandma, doing all the worrying that a mother is supposed to do, and I've had the nonchalant side as well, which was my mother, who just let me do whatever, and make all kinds of mistakes, and have to pick up the pieces myself, and so on and so forth. So I'm torn personality-wise. I really should have had only one such thing. It's good to have a variety, but I don't think it was good in my situation. I guess, divorces are supposed to be so terrible, when you are young, and at impressionable ages and everything, but I can never think of anything that was especially terrible. So I try and find things that are wrong. I'm good at finding negative parts to things, and I'm good at finding positive things to. I guess people think I'm negative a lot, because the U.S. is more negative than positive. (watch the news for example). So I guess when things are good, I find things that are wrong, and when things are bad, I find things that are good. People I meet only remember the times I find bad stuff though, while I myself, do not think I'm negative. We can all blame society for this, if you are looking for someone to blame. Society is a good excuse for everything. "why do you have a drinking problem?".... Hmmm, must be society putting all these pressures on me, for example. I was telling Matt a story today, when I was in 7th grade, I had a teacher, who will remain nameless. The story is as follows. It was a Health class, and we had just finished discusing a story about a drunk driver killing some people in a car crash. Everyone was giving there lame comments, about how it's so terrible, and everything like that, everything a person had heard a hundred times before. So I raise my hand, "well, I think that killing those people was a good thing", everyone get's quiet, and looks to the teacher for a response... "and why is that Doug?" she says, "well, it reduces the population". The teacher freaks out at this points, and tells me to stay after class. Not letting me back up my point, or anything like that. After class she instructs me to write a 2 page essay on why drunk driving is bad. Fuck, I know why drunk driving is bad, everyone knows that. She knows I know that. What is making my write a report going to change anything about anything. She was trying to instruct my thinking, so that I'm "normal", or whatever. How about an opinion lady, that's why we are in the U.S. Different opionions is what makes this country great. I'm not saying that it was smart of me to say that, or that I think people dying is good because it reduces the population, but I think she responded just to the comment, and not the action. I should not have said that, I should have had something better, but conversations like that need to be stirred up a bit. We need to have people challenging authority, asking questions, and embracing different opinions, instead of trying to turn everyone into a robot, where everyone has the same thought about everything. Yeah, I'm still quite bitter about that. But people need to look at the both side of every situation. It's makes you realize what is really bad about something, instead of just thinking that it's bad, ask yourself, why is it bad? Why is it good? and what makes those things true. That's what a real teacher would do. Make you think about your actions. You spend 12 years of your life in public (or private schooling), learning the same tainted information that everyone else learns, why not create individuality. Instead of just teaching someone information, teach them to think. Use your mind, You've always heard information that we only use like 10% of our brain power. So every teacher needs to be thinking of ways to help increase this. Just teaching someone to add numbers, or what day Christopher Columbus landed on the western side of the world. It's just an endless circle, our teachers. They spend 16=17 years learning the same things that everyone else does, and they spend the rest of their lives teaching those very same things. Ugh, pointless. I've tried to break away from that on many occasions. Not like I'm some sort of pioneer, or matyr or anything, I'mm sure there are people who are trying to do the exact same things I've spent most of my life rebelling against. I think we should take every kid that has ever made a unique comment, and take them aside, and make them think about their comment, and write a report explaining why they think that way. It provides that kid with a unique oppurtunity, and allows other kid that "thinking out of the box" (for lack of better terminology) is a good thing. Expanding differnet brain powers, and promoting a different sense of thinking, instead of trying to tame it. Christ, I'm quite adamet about this. I should write a letter to the editor about this. I made a speech in college about why littering is good. I didn't quite get my point at the time. I shouldn't have said that littering is a good thing, because it wasn't the write way of looking at it. My speech was all about survival of the fittest, and shit like that. That we are taking away from animals natural habitat, and they have less and less food to eat, so eventually, the only animals that will be around is animals that can digest human's waste. That really wasn't my point. I dont think littering is good. I'm the biggest fan of the enviroment, and the soil, and the earth, and do everything possible to make things work for the most part. My speech should have been about why science, or the study of why we are here, anything like that, is just bullshit. I should have said, that if science, and the study of evolution, or really, the religion of evolution is crap. And made that it justifies littering. Because if survival of the fittest is the way the world works, then really, we shouldn't be putting everything in landfills, we should be throwing it out into the highways, or dumping it into forests. Right, see how much crap our educational system is in. You can use so many of the crap theories they spend 12 years jamming into your head against the people who made them up. Christ, Charles Darwin is no different that Martin Luther, (the guy who created the Lutheran religion). Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to be educated, really important. But I think it's more important to think. Look at Doctor's. One of my friends from school is going to be a doctor. They guy got great marks in school his whole life. He's good at taking information that someone tells you, storing it into the memory banks, and cutting someone open, and accessing that information. Can the guy think for himself at all? No. I say this guy is not intelligent whatsoever, but he is getting a lot of money, because he has a good memory when it comes to school stuff. While the people that really think, are sitting on their asses, doing not a whole lot, because our educational system doesn't promote people who think, it promotes people who retain information other people know, and when they make mistakes, it's just another thing that they tell someone else, rather than having the people who think things through, look everything over, and analyze what can go wrong, before it does. Understand my point. Good, that's enough of a rant. I could go on for hours and hours, but I'm sure I've lost everyone's interest already. Comments on the subject, email me. I can't find anyone to talk about stuff like this with me. "you're just wierd Doug". I'll know I've found someone when they actual listen to me, instead of zoning off, like everyone does, and then, instead of just agreeing, just to stop me from talking, or thinking, they'll challenge me, and agree with me because.. or disagree because... God, it pisses me off more than anything when someone just nods, and then says nothing. C'mon, like a rant like that didn't make you think about something. I probably just come on way to strong, and then scare everyone off. You need to be strong, not back down, and put me in my place if I'm stupid, (and why am I stupid?) See what I mean. Ok, I'm done now. Good to chat about things like that with a computer screen. I'm stuck just talking with myself about stuff like this because no one wants to hear it. No one wants to admit that the 12 years or whatever they put into school was just worthless, and if you really think that the time you spent is school, you really learned, then you've been fortunate to have great teachers all the way through, or you are just really dense. I'll choose the latter. Read some real books, and you'll know what a hoax all the things you've learned really are. Take classes that make you think, with non-biased teachers, like a bible study class by a teacher that isn't religious, or doesnt preach his religion while he teaches it. Or take a history class in which the teacher has read, "The History of the United States". It's in the movie, "good will hunting". Matt Damon says, "that book will knock your socks off". It's true too. Read a lot of books, and take english classes, you might actually be intelligent then instead of "smart". What a fucking hoax, "smart". If my kids ever call any kid "smart", I'm going to smack them right across the head. Fuck it, I'm home schooling my kids. Fuck if the teachers or the superintendents or the board of education or the fucking Department of Education know anything. Those people were good at learning what everyone else already knows, so why do they get to choose what we our kids learn. Let's grow up a bit as a country, and make our kids more intelligent for once. I'm pissed, and I'm out. August 22nd, 2002 Wow, can't believe it's been 2 days since my last entry. The time just flies up here. I'm working way too hard. I went to Barne's and Noble's the other day to buy a few books, and now I'm stuck with what I'm supposed to do. I want to help out my brother, I want to help out my father, I want to read a lot. I want to work on webpages, I want to build a car, and there is only 24 hours in a day. What sucks is that you have to spend like 6 of them sleeping. I wish I was like a cat. I think my cats only sleep like 3 hours a day, and all in 20 minutes shifts too. What's I would really like to do is operate on only like 2 hours of sleep a day. One in the morning, and one is the early evening. Then I could go all day, have so much more time for stuff. Think about how much of your life is just wasted in your bed. Sleep, what a damn waste of time, and I just can't stop doing it. I should take some sort of drugs that will just keep me up all the time, going and going and going. THis is the time of my life when I really don't want to sleep. I want to sleep when I'm old and gray, that's what I wish we could do. Store up all the time we should be sleeping and then use that up when we are old and have nothing better to do. So I went to the bookstore, inspired myself because of my last journal entry here. I want to learn more. And I've always been fascinated by religion. How people can just believe blindly. Granted, I was raised up a heavy heavy Catholic. I was an altar boy, went to CCD for like 14 years. So I know what religion is like. Ever since I've been in high school, I've always had questions. More and more questions each day, stopped going to church, thought I didn't believe in God, and pretty much called myself an atheist. Yeah, I've already written up a entry on this, so I'm not going to repeat myself. You can check it out in the June Diary archived page if you've missed it. Anyway, I'm not going to say I'm an atheist anymore. I was calling myself agnostic, which is a much better term, but then I don't even think I'm that. So maybe a secularist, but not that really either. That one is a little too vague. I guess I'd have to make up my own term, but mostly, I would call myself agnostic if anyone asked. Actually, if someone ever directly asked me, I don't think I could answer. Partly because I'm am sort of ashamed, but mostly because no one would understand. I bought a book on atheism, and they say that 90 percent of the world's population believe in some sort of God, so it's hard to talk to people about religion when most assume an agnostic and an atheist are pretty much the same thing, which they are not at all. Agnostics are like half atheists, and half religious folk. I hope you understand what an agnostic is. If you don't here it is out of the dictionary. ag·nos·tic - - (g-nstk) n. 1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God. 2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism. 3 One who professes ignorance, or denies that we have any knowledge, save of phenomena; one who supports agnosticism, So I just read the introduction of the book so far, and it is heavy, heavy stuff. The author is quite convincing with his atheist theories, not that I'm convinced, because I'm totally skeptical of everything until I know both sides of the story. So another book I got, "darwin's Dangerous Idea", get it, that book is going to take a more religious stand on everything, so I'm goign to read that after I'm done with my atheist book. I should probably read them at the same time, but I'm afraid I'll lose some information, and then have to read them both all over again, which I'll probably do anyhow. I usually read most non-fiction books twice at least, Then I picked up a philosophy book about religoin, a critique of it, more tuned to a christian who is just a little curious, so that'll be good when I'm done. If I get into philosophy a little, then I'm going to try and read some of Nietzsche's works. And why am I doing all this. I don't know. I went to college and all I wanted to do all the time was take all the undergraduate courses. I just took all the courses for my major, then you are supposed to take classes for your degree, and I just went backwards, taking a lot of history classes, pysche classes, and relgious studies classes. What a waste of money, yes. I learned a lot though. Just ask me about the Old Testament. I know it quite well. That was a great class to take. So when my grandmother, die hard catholic, starts attacking me because I have a book that says atheism on it, I'll be able to shut her up before she get's all pissed off at me. It's one thing for some uneducated redneck to start bitching about religion, and christianity. I can see people getting pissed off about that. But for someone to start ripping on me for questioning relgion. Not a good idea. I know both sides of the story. I'll tell you exactly why you, or maybe, when most of the population, believes in God, and I garuntee one of my reasons will be in there, and I'll tell you why you shouldn't. Just don't ask me to take a stand, because I can't yet. I can take a stand on probably every other topic known to man, but religion, too sensitive an issue. People get really defensive when you start questioning their beliefs. A girl I've known longer than anyone else, was probalby the most religious person I know, and she hated talking to me. Probably because I always brought up why God doesn't exist. To try and convince someone that one thing they have thought to be true, isn't, nearly impossible. I'm just too open-minded I guess. I mean, if I get into a debate with someone, I stick to my guns the whole time. If I'm thinking that I should be on their side, I still will lie and make up things just to continue the debate. That's probably the best part of debating, because when you are wrong, the other person will continue to go at it with you. But when I am right, then it's usually over pretty quickly. So if I ever argue with you, and it goes for longer than 5-10 minutes, it's probably because I am wrong. So I'm probably quite difficult at times, but I love it more than anything. A debate like that inspires you to learn more, to go and research the topic, read books about it, and you end up learning way more. The only person I don't continuely argue with is Jaime. I couldn't tell you why either. Even when I know I'm write, I usually back down pretty quick. She's the only person that I've been like that with. Actually, I'm quite different with her than pretty much everyone else I've known. Why is that, I'm still trying to figure out. I could buy books on "love", and relationships, and all that, but those all seem to be just crap. A pyschology book on love would probably be the best thing, but I hate pyschology more than anything. Granted, I respect the science of it, I just hate people who think they know people. Or want to study certian behaviors. Or, worse yet, diagnose certian personalites. I know, Pyschologits have done good things, and all that. Getting rid of the pyscho's, helping people to understand themselves better, and whatever other crap. But I just can't, in good conscious, diagnose personalities. Everyone is unique. There are just too many people on this planet, to many genes, to many gene mutations, for anyone to be exactly the same. Because every child has a 25 percent chance of getting certian genes from their parents, multiply that by the type genes (which we still don't know), and multiply that by the amount of people on this planet. Come on now. Any sort of disorder (to use a psyche term, nothing is a disorder) is probably just as unique as each person, so the classifications are just way too vague. I've known 3 people that were diagnosed manic depressive, and neither seemed remotely close to each other in personality type. If you are manic depressive, you might commit suicide, you might develop schesophrenia, you'll probably be depressed your whole life? No, a manic depressive should be one thing. You are grouping way to many people into the same stereotypes, just for the sake of labeling. Psychologists don't think of people as people. They think of people as personalities. The opening sentence in my psyche book for college (which I've read 3 times) went something like this, "when I look at myself in the mirror, i see two versions of myself, one, the generic, hair, nose, mouth, and eyes blinking, and the other, a set of neuroconnectors sending and recieving chemicals from the brain, telling each muscle what to do." That's exactly what pyschologists see, if that makes sense to you, maybe you'd see what a hoax pyschology is to me. What would I do without this journal? I'm obsessed with typing in it. I'm so pissed I didn't keep one for the last few months, as I've kept one ever since I was in third grade. You should read through those sometimes. Interesting stuff. I hope I can convince my kids into reading as much as I do, and writing in a journal. What's most important is that you understand yourself. Take things that you read, and relate them to yourself. Fine, read pysche books, but instead of looking at someone else as a disorder, relate it to yourself, and diagnose yourself. Read history books, real ones, not the bullshit school ones. Well, read those, beacause that's true, but read a book from the point of view of the Indians when Columbus landed, the peasant farmers in the Civil war, you know, the other side of the spectrum. Read ancient literature, like myths and folklore, but also read a Stephen King book. Read novels, like Catcher in the Rye, or the Scarlet Letter. Always, always, get a point of view from as much as you can before forming your opinion. Encourage yourself to be as open-minded as possible, and not just with people, or races, because that's bullshit, who cares about anything like that. How could anyone be bothered by someone just because they are black, or mexican, or because they can't speak english. Just because someone doesn't speak English does not mean they are not as intelligent as you are. It's funny, depressing, and quite sad when you meet someone that doesn't speak english. Everyone always seems to talk "down" to them. They talk all slow, like they are have zero intelligence. That's just terrible. I'd be so pissed if I went to Russia or something, and everyone treated me like I was an idiot because I couldn't speak there language. Empathy is the most important word in the dictionary, and no one knows what it means. Just put yourself in someone elses shoe's. Think of the person behind you in line, think of the busy lady with 3 kids she can't control. Think of a black person surrounded by a group of whites. The racists would stare, make jokes, rip on them to their comrades, or try not to make eye contact. The people who are the fastest to call themselves "not racists", are probably just as bad. "I looked, made eye contact, but I was cetian not to look too long" Trying to intentionally feign respect is just as bad. Who cares. Just think of humans as people. That is just another person, but encourage yourself to get to the point where you don't have to think about it. Don't think, "oh, I have to make myself not look like a racist". Ugh, I hate that. Better yet, teach your children not to care. Sex, nudity, porn, another topic. Parents are so quick to parent other children. Many people think that if they don't feel it's appropriate for thier kid, then it shouldn't be approprate for any kid. Let people parent their own children. I'm not going to hide nudity, or sex, or anything like from my kids. I don't want them to have an insecurities, or think that their is anything wrong with love, or sex. Their isn't. What is the harm of sex when there is love involved. And love can last from 3 minutes to 80 years. Teach people to respect their feelings, there bodies, and their emotions. We'd see a lot less kids getting into trouble with older men/women, if they respected themselves more. All that comes with the parents respecting their kids, and each other. What is wrong with sex on TV, as long as the couple is respecting each other. I'm not saying let's go with all out hardcore porn everywhere, because we don't want to raise perverts or anything. Teach love. That's why the 60's were so beautiful. Peace and love, the two more beautiful words. Well, I would like to chat more on that, but another time maybe. I'm quite tired. It's hard to believe I work construction and on a farm almost every second that I'm not writing on this page. Well, damned sleep, but there isnt much I can do about that. Believe me, I've tried. Well, I'm going to sleep now. Have a teriffic night, and I hope to chat with you again soon. Home © Doug Malcore 2002