The Best Shape

Consider your favorite shape. Visualize it. Fill your mind with only the awesomeness of that shape. Keep it there. Good. Now I'm gonna blow it up in your face because whatever shape that was, it was NOT the best shape. The best shape in the world is the CIRCLE. Weren't thinking of that were you? You were thinking of a square or a triangle or dodecagon, but nobody ever thinks about the circle. Noooo the circle is round, it doesn't belong. It doesn't have corners.
But look around you. Forget the furniture. Look at the objects, like pens, or lamps, buttons, or bottles. They're CIRCULAR. And then look outside. The sun. The moon. The leaves. They're at least round.
We need show more appreciation for circles. We think the wheel is a primitive idea, but have we come up with anything better for our cars? The wheel was one of our first brilliant ideas as cavemen, and we're still using it. It's not primitive. It's timeless.
Who ever came up with the heart being a symbol of love? Out of all things. I heard a quote somewhere, not sure where, but it goes like this:
"If you really love someone, put their name in a circle instead of a heart, because a heart can break, but a circle goes on forever."
Notice it said CIRCLE. Not square, not rectangle, but CIRCLE. Triangles get way too much credit just because they have an entire section of math about them. But circles, they're just as important. They have their own symbol that applies only to circular things. Pi. Remember in elementary school when you had Pi Day and you'd get pie and not have to learn? Thank the circle.
Cirlcles. Remember the circle. It's underappreciated, while its contributions to our world are endless. Forget those other shapes. Give the circle some love.

Idealism

Maybe we've always been living in this stupid idealistic society where actions are defined by thoughts instead of logic. But recently, idealism is kind of making me mad
It started in my first forensics tournament. I didn't do very well, probably because it was my first time and I didn't know what to expect, but that's not the point. The point is, in finals, I chose to watch orations because that was the event that I did worst in. Turns out, most of the speeches were about abstract ideas that were conveyed through the use of sentimentality and tear jerkers. For example, one of the best oraters was primarily using the story of a friend of her's that died of cancer to make you prioritize the people around you more. She made one of the judges CRY.
Now, that's all good and well in a mere competition like this, but when people start using idealism to govern themselves, that's where the problems come. Because the thing about idealism is, when you want to rise, you rise FAST. But the thing is, the fall is inevitable. Idealists rise ridiculously high in a short amount of time, but they fall hard. They didn't build a strong foundation. They rose through the manipulation of people's hearts, not their minds.
Now, as with any beliefs or ideas, you're bound to insult people. A lot of people will get offended, and eventually, you'll find some idealist with the guts and the ability to challenge your post. Then, down you go, and very possibly infamously. Take Tiger Woods for an example. He seemed like a perfect man, and the news loved him. But when a few incriminating details arise, everyone drops him like a hot potato. But if you think about that bad things he's done, can't you think of people you know who've done similar or worse? But Tiger fell, and he fell hard, because he rose ridiculously high.
My oration was about bacteria and why we should stop killing them. It was primarily written with logic, because no one's going to cry over some single celled organisms that they've been told will kill them. Logic acts slowly. Once you've gotten someone's attention, you've got to use an extensive amount of facts, research and data to support your views. But by doing so, you build yourself a strong foundation, that won't be as hard to take out. Then, when a worthy opponent challenges your claim, they've got have better infomation. Better data. Better proof. And if they do, well, then you deserve to step down. And what's more, you can do it like a man.
I'm not saying that logic is the only way to go. Idealism is effective, I admit. But to govern ourselves only upon the ideas of men, that's a different story. In reality, men as a whole don't really have a set of ethics. You'll always find something contradicting the other. If you're going to follow what society says, you'll never get anywhere. Society says EVERYTHING.
Back to what I was saying about Tiger Woods. A California newspaper had two rather interesting articles one day. One was about about Tiger Woods. This guy was brutal, he used every non vulgar adjective he could think of. But then, in a different article, we find a story about people who are paying $1000 to learn only how to pick up women. Contradiction?
But logic can also prove a problem. If you use only logic, we'll eventually lose our own humanity. We'll become robots, never acting upon love, or virtue, or ambition, or desire. Logic doesn't corrupt like idealism, but it erases.
Neither idealism nor logic can be particularly productive without the other. But we tend to tip to one or the other, and right now, that seems to be idealism. My suggestion is that we tip the scales the other way, so we don't lose our humanity or our minds.

Out With the Old!

Well, since it's almost Chinese New Year, I've changed the url to prone2dementia.blogspot.com! Woot! (Actually, I changed it because it seemed that no one could remember the previous url) But this time, it'll actually be permanent.
Speaking of Chinese New Year, it's this Sunday. On Valentine's Day! I remember back in the day in elementary school where Valentine's Day was a day that everyone looked forward to. Everyone would bring in these cute little cards that were folded up and taped shut with a little red heart sticker, and everyone would look forward to giving them out and getting tons of cards and stuffing our faces with candy and not having to learn. But then, the traditions dwindled....the older we got, the more "romantic" Valentine's Day HAD to be, and you couldn't just give cute little cards to your friends of the opposite gender without them getting the wrong idea. I wish we could go back to those days because I REALLY like chocolate. I like reading the cards too, but the chocolate was AMAZING. Chocolate's always amazing, but when people give you chocolate, it's....well, ok, so there's really not much difference. I just like chocolate.
Let's see....what else is up? Hmmmm....I wrote a poem about metal ties for English. I'll have to post it sometime.

Really?

Looking back at the latest post on my blog, it's REALLY been a while since I took the initiative/responsibility/other big words that describe virtues I oughta have, but sometimes lack in. But I'll take a few minutes to outline everything new that's happened.
1. New house: I've probably said this already, so nevermind
2. New car: Two weeks old actually. Toyota RAV4 with 5 speed, 6 cylinder engine and a "moonroof". Back in my day those were called sunroofs...
3. New TV: Just bought it today, actually. Samsung LCD 46" 1080p, 120 Hz, 80k:1 contrast. Very pretty, but I had to install it. Which I don't mind, because I like installing stuff and everything, but that means I also had to deal with The Cables. I'm telling you now, NEVER deal with The Cables at my house. It'll take you ages to recover, and I doubt you'll get anywhere anyway.
4. CHRISTMAS!!!!!! Not exactly a new holiday, but it's the first and last Christmas of the year. I wanted to express my joy at this amazing day.
5. Whoever wrote "Let It Snow" definetely didn't do it in Kansas.

You know what sucks about school computers? Everything is blocked. I was trying to play "This is the Only Level", a really awesome game starring an elephant. Unfortunately, it was blocked for "cartoon violence". What do they expect kids these days to play, solitaire? Honestly. And it's not even violent, there's not blood, when the elephant dies you just get an upside down gray corpse at the bottom of the game. There's this really cool book I've been reading called "Heaven's Wager", it's about this dude who fakes his death so he can rip $20 million off of his bosses who ripped $20 million off of him. It's rocks, but not as much as Thr3e. Now there's an epic book. Did you know that "epic" is actually a reading term? I found that out in English...and it sorta puts a dimmer on the word.

To Behead a Crow

We're reading To Kill a Mockingbird for English, which is the insperation for the title of this post. Boo Radley's incident in the first chapter sorta reminds me of this really epic book I read called 3. I really shouldn't say why, because that would give away the biggest twist in the story, and there's a lot of them too. Speaking of epic, apparently there's this teaching program at my local university where they make their sophomores observe classes so they can confirm that this is what they want to teach, and those students are part of the EPIC program. I wanna be an EPIC student, they even write it in all caps. The word caps has so many definitions. Off the top of my head, I can think of the one you where, the ones on bottles and stuff, and the expression "to cap it all off'". What a resourceful word. You know those "I'm from the goverment and I'm here to help you" types? Those are the human resources people. I'm hoping to meet one someday. My friend is going to go vegetarian for a week to see what it's like. I don't think it'll work, because it's not just eating meat that's illegal, eggs, cheese, and milk count too. This whole random writing thing is fun. I don't even really have to think....all I need is a first topic and the rest comes naturally. I should do this more often.

Patterns will own your mousepad.

I was fuming to myself one day about my awesome rant that I had forgotten that time, and suddenly I got an epiphany of simply ranting about something that has nothing to do with anything. So, I will rant about my imaginery elephant that I wrote about in English. His name is Flowers, after Flowers for Algernon. That's a great book, by the way. Algernon is my favorite character, because he's a mouse. Or a rat. One of those things. Charlie is ok, too, but I didn't like his ending. He's just too naive and innocent.
Naivete is a horrible and dangerous thing. I'm also missing an accent on top of that 'i', the 2 little dots. I think the word is French, but I'm only learning French 1 so naturally we haven't gotten that far. I didn't join French club, even though they mentioned we were going to make good French food. I wanted to join Model UN, but it costs $18 to join!! Last year we didn't pay anythign at all. Plus there's a 2 dollar signup fee. I mean, Model UN was fun, but not $20 fun. Maybe next year. I did however, join volunteer initiative. There was one club that made really good cookies, it was 2 for 25 cents. There was a Christian club too, called First Priority. I joined that too.