Light the way for my ever-wandering heart.

As I was walking around lunch today, I realized something.

I am a part of many cliques.

I can go around to a lot of tables at lunch and pretty much blend in with everybody there.

The Sophomores. The Seniors. The “punks.” The “nerds.”  The “oddballs.”

I’m a chameleon.

I guess this is kind of because I have at least a friend or two in each of these cliques.

I assume most people would read this as a good thing.

But I know better.

Each time I migrate groups, I put on a mask. A mask that will hide all the other sides of my life. I am a 30-sided dice.

My inward attitude remains the same throughout. My outward behavior changes. Lots.

Yet each group allows me to deal with my problems in a different way than the last.

Am I…

Am I a jerk? Am I a nerd? Am I nice? Am I mean? Am I hated? Am I loved? Am I welcome?

Where do I belong?

I have best friends I can talk to about this, but they’re usually away, playing Call of Duty or watching House, and I don’t want to bother them.

But their absence definitely isn’t helping me any.

11-23-2009

It’s been a long time since I put up a “Random thoughts” post. So here goes:

I find it ironic when Atheists say “Oh my God” or celebrate Christmas.

I equate girls’ lusting over a hot guy’s abs with guys’ staring at a girl’s boobs.

I still don’t like Korean music. I mean, with Christian music, I was forced to listen to it for a pretty long time, and I came to like it after a while. I can’t do that with Korean music.

I’m confiding in people I thought I’d never like.

I don’t celebrate Halloween because it goes against my religion. None of you Christians should either.

Speaking of religion…. aren’t other monotheistic religions also right, but only practiced in a different way? At least… Christianity, Judaism and Islam should. It was at the prophets where they branched.

My cousin totally looks like Taylor Lautner.

Have you ever….?

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. School has been preventing me from thinking freely. Yeah, I totally DID just say that.

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in an alternate universe? An alternate reality?

Well, I have.

Have you wondered what it would be like to wake up one day and have a different name?

A different family? A different mother, father, brother, sister? To have a dog instead of a cat?

What if you lived in a different state? What if you drank chocolate milk one day, rather than regular milk?

These things all seem so infinitesimal, so irrelevant. Especially that last one.

And we must always remember Newton’s  third law of motion *(which don’t only apply to motion):

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

In other words, every thing you do, every thing you  say, every thing you THINK…

Has an effect on the future.

If your father had never met your mother, you may not even exist. He may have married someone else. You’d look different, have different brothers or sisters, different name, a different life altogether.

If you had a dog rather than a cat, maybe you wouldn’t be out one night, looking for your dog that ran away. You may actually have studied and passed that math test the next day. Earned that 4.0. Went to Harvard Med. Discovered a cure for cancer. Changed the world.

If you had chocolate milk rather than regular, the chocolate-y goodness wouldn’t have caused you to feel lazy, slack off on the excersizing, gain weight, keep gaining weight, and die from diabetes.

It’s all so crazy, isn’t it?

If you went back in time and killed a mosquito, you may just have prevented malaria from spreading. Then Africans would super populate the earth.

Do you still wish you had a different mother, father or pet?

I don’t. At least, not anymore.

Because through the last few years, there’s one thing I’ve learned, if anything:

Everything happens for a reason.

Today.

Today like, all other days, had its ups and downs.

Today at lunch, I let some kids sit at our lunch table because someone kicked them out of their table.  That’s an up, I guess. I felt pretty good, even though some people at our table didn’t like that they were sitting with us.

I got home today and started playing video games with the mentality that “I’ll do my homework later.” Up.

We had a concert today. Orchestra concert. We did rather well. Had a swell time. Up.

On the way home, my aunt made a left going into where McDonald’s is, across from Arco, probably thinking there’s a road going through. “Oh,” she said. “There’s no road.” Then she went forward for a second or two, then took a right.

Into a ditch.

Triple down.

My cousin, his friend and I got out to try to push it out of the mud it was stuck in while my aunt tried to back out. No luck.

I went across the street to ask someone for help. We spent 15 minutes  trying to find somewhere to hook his rope into. We found a place where the spare tire goes. There’s a latch in the compartment. Meanwhile, someone from Les Schwab stopped in. As well as a friend from school who also happened to be at the concert and was stopping by McDonald’s.

He took the first guy’s  “wimpy V6″ SUV and tried to pull it out while Mr. Schwab put the car in reverse and tried to back out. The rope snapped.

Next we tried under the rear bumper. The bumper warped. A lot. We had to stop.

Instead of cursing God, though, I praised him. I thanked him for these peoples’ hospitality while my patience wore thin. I thought about reasons maybe why this happened. Then it struck me.

God was testing me. Was he? I think he was, in a way. Testing my faith. Wondering if I would curse Him in dire times. Or to call out to Him as a request or as a praise.

My mom arrived on the scene, frantic. I calmed her down and told her nothing was wrong.

We called a tow truck (thank God for Meridan Towing) that pulled us out in five minutes. That was an hour after we fell in.

As my mom was taking me home, I thought about how I would have to give excuses to my teachers tomorrow, telling them why I hadn’t finished my homework.

Then I thought of something else. Maybe God’s telling me, “Get off your sorry behind and quit procrastinating.”

Maybe this was a reward for being hospitable toward those  two kids who had come to our lunch table today.

Because nothing is a coincidence. Everything happens for a reason.

I don’t know. Things are complicated, man.

Quick?

Alright, I know it’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post. It’s because my mind has been blank because of school and homework and just… life. No time to think. Only to work.

And play games.

I’ve been playing GTAIV lately. I have to say, this GTA is really different from the games in the GTAIII series (which includes Vice City, San Andreas, etc).

You know how GTA is, though. Killing cops, stealing cars, shooting people, blowing up innocent people.

But there’s something about this game that really irks me.

You go through the game, being a contract killer,  assassinating people, delivering drug packages, etc. You know, illegal stuff.

But then, whenever the main character is offered drugs, he refuses.

When he’s offered alcohol, he refuses.

When he’s offered smokes, he refuses.

Rockstar (the creators of GTA) know that they’ve gotten in trouble for being a bad influence on players. So they must have done this on purpose.

There’s a function where you can go to a bar with friends. And when it’s over, you leave the bar piss drunk. The screen moves around and stuff, and you can’t walk straight without falling over. If you get into a car, the main character says, “I’m not in a position to make good choices right now.”

It’s almost like Rockstar is trying to educate us.

But their efforts go to waste when the whole game is centered around killing people, running drugs and stealing things.

The main character doesn’t even wear a seatbelt when he drives. You know how I know? Because many a time I have gotten into a head-on collision with another car, or drove straight into a  low obstacle, and flown through the windshield, shattering it, throwing me head over heels about 50 feet away. Yet somehow he always survives.

Wouldn’t you think that if Rockstar was using that to make people wear seatbelts, they’d at least make the guy die afterward? Because nobody can survive a head-on collision at 90MPH, get back up and into the car, and drive away.

Rockstar, I applaud your efforts. But try harder.

I have never felt more unwanted in my life.

It’s like… I don’t have many classes with people in my class, so I’m mostly friends with seniors, with a handful of sophomores here and there.

Still, when the junior class gets together to do something, I always feel….

Ostracized.

Yet, at this point, it feels that there’s nothing I can do about it.

The seniors are graduating this year, meaning that our class will have to step up and take the responsibility. The Sophomores will become Juniors.

And I’ll be under a table.

In the fetal position. Feeling….

Ostracized.

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ƒailure.

Alright, there are two things I want to talk about today. One is stereotypes. The other is pop culture. I’ll separate them with a line.

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We all see stereotypes. I’ve written essays on it. I even posted them on my other blog. You can see it here.

“You’re Asian, so you must be hella good at math, and you must play violin and piano.”

The fact is, I CHOSE to play those instruments. And I can’t do anything about math. I suck at it.

Yes, I CHOSE to play them. It was a conscious decision. My mom made my brother take piano lessons when he was in Kindergarten, and I went to the lessons, heard it and asked my mom if I could take lessons as well. I was three at the time. I don’t think my mom ever wanted me to take lessons.

Violin. My parents apparently saw my budding passion for music and used to take me and my brother to watch the Seattle Symphony a lot. Like… a LOT. I remember that when they would tune before they played, that they were going to play “Star Wars,”  because, you know, the introductory chord in “Star Wars” is a B-flat major scale, and the brass tunes to a B-flat… Yeah. Anyway. I remember that one day we were watching TV and I pointed at the violins and I said, “I wanna play dat.” They were like, “O.O really?” I said yes, of course, and I got lessons. I was five. But I screwed around, both in piano and violin lessons, which is why I’m not as good as I should be.

Also: “You’re Asian, so you must play Starcraft, like, 24/7″

No. NO. Here’s the truth: I hate Starcraft. I HATE it. Kinda. I only play it as a last resort, or if certain friends are over at my house.

If you consider this the stereotype, then I’m definitely whitewashed.

It is completely unfair to put me in a group where you expect certain people to  do (or play) certain things just because the color of their hair and the size of their… car….

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As my friends and I were discussing very recently, the world is going down in a ball of flame.

One of my teachers told me and my class that our class is “a bunch of wimps.”  Registration for AP English III this year was an all-time low.

But, in the words of Chuck Norris, and I quote, “If we’re going to win America’s culture wars, we need the younger generations to do it. … We need to re-engage with our young people and plug them in to America’s glorious past so they can build a brighter future. “

We, as teenagers in the 21st century, have apparently been given a huge responsibility.

But it begins with our attitude.

I honestly feel sorry for Lady Gaga. I don’t like her music or anything, and I don’t think she’s that good-looking, but I think there’s a reason why she hid her secret.

Because people like all of YOU would just make fun of her. Give her credit for hiding it for that long, and give her credit for being so cool about it. Others would have exploded or hid away in their caves on Hollywood Hills.

Sometimes, however, people just ask for it. Like that Kanye West.  But then people who took his image and photoshopped it into other things weren’t very creative. I even saw some of Edward and half-blood whatnot.

Here’s something I thought of a while back, but never put together until today:

Quick question.

I thought this was interesting.

The following passage is an excerpt from a 2004 essay that discusses the decline in artistic awareness, appreciation, and taste in America.

While many of use express disdain at the declining condition of artistic awareness, let alone appreciation, in this country, we cannot honestly express surprise. This general decline in tastes has not escaped the commentary and analysis of cultural critics who have warned us that we may be turning into a nation of Philistines. These same critics have pointed to a pair of causes for this cultural decline. Perhaps, they note, the decline is due to the crumbling state of our educational system, or to the media’s focus on pop culture and the general decline of taste this breeds. Nevertheless, this type of scholarly discussion about the roots of the decline, while relevant to sociological and cultural historical analysis, does not change the sad fact that the same country that gave the world film noir, jazz, and abstract expressionism now mostly concerns itself with teen movies and boy bands. We must use our understanding and analysis of the causes to address the problem of artistic decline in America.

Before we can begin a discussion of artistic decline, we must first define the word “art,” an endeavor that has proven problematic, especially after the introduction of modern art forms during the twentieth century. Indeed, some may argue that the entire debate about artistic decline in this country is flawed due to our exclusion of modern forms of art such as pop music. Many claim that such discussion can be seen as snobby, even culturally imperious. Without entering the debate on the validity of the post-modern conception of art is an idea, the question of “what is art” must be addressed. But it should be addressed expeditiously. Far too much time has been spent arguing over whether a teen movie is more or less art than Citizen Kane is, or whether the music of a boy band is more or less art than are the works of Sondheim. To be fair, society should not adopt an exclusionary definition or attitude. Indeed, history has proven that today’s pop music can be tomorrow’s great art in retrospect. Thus, we should accept all artistic endeavors as art. Individuals and critics should judge the quality of such endeavors. But this does not change the fact that today people are unaware of and uneducated about the classics, or even about recent movements in art apart from cinema, television and pop music.

Think about a United States of America in which artistic education, and thus appreciation, flourishes, a place where parents read books on art and listen to classical music and opera as well as pop music. Children observe these adult activities and mimic them. Parents read to their children and educate them. These parents also give their children art books, classical recordings, and plays as gifts. These parents underwrite, with their tax dollars, public art, public broadcasting,  and community art groups. In school, students receive an education in art history, classical music, and opera. This curriculum can also include pop culture such as the music videos, teen movies, and pop music students enjoy in their free time. In fact, a better education in art will better equip them to judge the artistic merit of these newer, more trendy art forms, or at least place these art forms in historical context and analyze them as an outgrowth of societal and sociological trends–an important aspect of artistic knowledge that has been lost by the general public. When these children grow up, some may produce their own art, which could likely be higher in quality than the pop music and movies produced today. Imagine a land of such developed artistic production and taste! How can we achieve such a society?

Having noted that the proliferation of low quality art in pop culture can be addressed effectively by education,  there remains one fundamental cause for the decline of artistic taste: the crumbling state of our educational system. The society dreamed of above can only be achieved by sustained efforts to improve the American educational system. Unfortunately, with tightening budgets due to increased levels of government debt, often the first programs cut are those that provide art and music classes. Often these cuts are viewed as easy ones by the public since they do not compromise the fundamentals supposedly required for an adequate education: reading, writing, history, science, and math. However, what the public often misses is that art, music, and culture are inextricably tied to literary and historical developments that themselves stem from changes in society and culture. A holistic approach to the arts would both redefine their role in education (thereby subsuming the argument of those who want to focus on fundamentals) and improve the state of artistic education by teaching students in an intertextual and multidisciplinary manner. The first step in improving artistic awareness and taste in this country will be not only to reinstate and improve art, music and other cultural classes but also to restructure the curriculum to provide a more holistic education in which art, music, and culture become a part of the fundamental education in history, literature, and society. This system would require more funding, and most likely higher taxes. However, such an investment would pay dividends by ensuring a more educated populace, one which is better equipped to analyze its surroundings in an analytically balanced manner and one which appreciates all forms of human artistic endeavor.

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Remember, I did not write this!