i don't really even know what to write about.  so much stuff has happened in the last two months i don't even know where to start.  there's not really a whole lot to say actually.  i basically have hung out with the same few people all summer, which i surprisingly don't mind.  i've always done well with being part of a group and its showing.  sure, it kinda sucks when i'm on facebook and see a party or something i don't get invited to, but whatever.

so i'm going to Lycoming College.  for a brief moment, i thought i was going back to towson, which i wasn't too unhappy with for some reason.  there's a couple people there that i will really miss.  one is matt, who i became surprisingly close with in a matter of 4 months.  the other is hannah....=)  but i'm really scared/anxious/nervous/excited about lycoming.  i won't know anyone and that will be the biggest thing, getting to know brand new people.  i'm determined to have an awesome time.

my thoughts are everywhere so there's only 1 more thing to write about....i made it.  as of saturday, for the first time since i started dating, i stayed single for a whole year.  i mean, i had some "things" but nothing where i felt i was ever committed to someone or anything of that nature.  i'm really surprised/relieved i made it.  i don't see the single-ness changing any time soon because 1.) its me and there's nothing about me worth dating.  2.) whats the point?  i dont want a serious relationship and what else is there to date for at this point in my life?

wow, this entry sounds like a middle schooler but i'm tired and don't really care about the quality of the entry.  it's more or less for me to document my thoughts anyway.

p.s. - second best O's game of the season: the go into extra innings tied 8-8, and they end up losing 17-8......wow

That's right, I said it.  The worldwide phenomenon that swept away countless allowances dedicated towards cartridges and boosters, not to mention the immeasurable total hours dedicated to these games, is completely racist.  If you do not agree with this theory, you will have to admit there are at least racist undertones in the gameplay.

For the sake of the sanity of all those who will understand this argument, my references will not extend past the Gold & Silver versions, and likewise will not reach beyond the Kanto region.  I came to this realization while simply talking with Bedig about how ridiculous it is that a mother sent her 5th grade son (Ash) out into the world to completely defend for himself and capture these wild creatures by himself.  Would you honestly send your 10-year-old out into the world, without any post-elementary education, just to see if he can catch these things?

That's not the racist part.  It's just an example of poor parenting.  Now onto the crux of the matter:

How would you describe Pokémon to someone who wasn't familiar?
-"You basically go out into the world and your goal is to catch and train these creatures called Pokémon.  You battle with them and your goal is to be the champion."

Well, for all intents and purposes, I would suppose it's fair to say that most people in the Pokémon world are Caucasian, if not white.  The only exception I can think of off the top of my head would be Brock.  In a conversation with Danny, we decided he is definitely not black, but more likely Indian.  As decided in the early 1900s in the Thine case of the U.S. Supreme Court, Indians are classified as Caucasian.  Ash, while sporting the jet black hair commonly found on those of Asian descent, has no other appearences that would lead one to believe he's Asian.  So we'll assume that the humans in the world of Pokémon are primarily white.

I would venture even further to say that most Pokémon trainers are white men.  In the video game, your rival, who beats the Elite Four before you do, is a white male.  The main character is a white male.  The majority of the gym leaders are white male.  A white man runs the terrorist organization Team Rocket.  White men dominate in this society.

What do these white men do?  They go out every day to capture these Pokémon, creatures which they deem to be lesser creatures than themselves.  Yes they do.  They go around in the wild, practically hunting for these individuals, desperate to capture the strongest and most powerful ones they can possibly find.  There are kinds of equipment used to catch the prey.  Once found, they are dueled into submission through means of physical force as well as fire, ice, water, even electricity and concentrated energy.  Once the "wild" Pokémon is weak and defenseless, the white man will mercilessly pelt the Pokémon with Pokéballs, small balls (heh) which are designed specifically for imprisoning, capturing, and holding said Pokémon.  You don't seem humans trying to stuff each other into those incredibly small Pokéballs, do you?  Of course not, they're other white males, the greatest species on Earth.  These magnificent creations should not be forced into these small prisons.

Once in these prisons, the Pokémon are expected to bend to the beck and call of their new "masters".  This goes to all lengths; flying, cutting, yardwork, moving, chores, even fighting each other so that the masters can feel better about themselves.  In the video game, you even get money for winning these battles.  Think back to Gold/Silver version.  You are just moving into your new house and there's a Machoke helping you move into the house.  Do you think that Machoke receives pay for his help?  Does he have insurance, vacation or paternity leave?  Doubtful at best.  It is likely he, nor any other Pokémon has a real home to return to, simply a small spherical prison.

Why do these Pokémon just submit to this?  It's hardly because they're not capable of self-defense.  Alakazam can lift other Pokémon with his mind and bend objects, I'm sure he's quite capable of harming a human.  It's simply because of a process I've learned about this semester known as sociological imagination.  Society tells these Pokémon exactly how they fit into the culture based on societal norms; society tells Pokémon that they are indeed lesser creatures and are not equal at all to humans.  They are meant to be dominated and there is little use fighting the inevitability.  While some Pokémon fight this (i.e. Abra, Mew, Charizard in th TV show), the overwhelming majority simply give in.  Even if you were to have a very high level Dragonite and you encoutered a "wild" Pidgey, how often will that Pidgey run away?  Very few times because it's engrained in that Pidgey's mind that it is there do be dominated by another Pokémon which is owned by a human.  That's right, society's grip on the minds of Pokémon is so powerful that they willingly meet their own demise.

What's to stop a Pokémon from running away once it's out of the pokéball?  As we've seen in the TV show, Pokémon can avoid being returned to their balls (heh).  Why not just fly or run far away?  Few Pokémon has very distinct creatures (that we know of) which would allow it to be distinguished should the owner go searching for it?  The answer is one word: fear.  These Pokémon are afraid of their masters because of the dominance they've exerted on them all their lives.  It starts out when the Pokémon is young and even as it grows stronger, possibly evolving, it's still afraid of the harm which could be caused by its master because of all the years of psycological training for that Pokémon to believe its master has complete, total, and utter dominance.

Pokémon can be traded.  How can this be?  You raise this Pokémon from a young age, refining its skills yet the second a "collector" opportunity comes along or the chance to fortify your strength it is traded away ever so whimsically.  What's more is that you can even force your Pokémon to breed!  How ridiculous is that?  You need a stronger Pokémon because the two you have aren't cutting it.  You got them when they were too old, so training them won't be so useful.  Instead, you force them to conceive a baby that will a.) never EVER meet its parents and b.) grow up to nothing but the bondage of being a Pokémon.

Finally, Jinx is nothing more than a Pokémon in black face.

That is my theory of how Pokémon is racist, or at the very least has severe racial undertones which are parallel to that of slave trading in Africa by the Europeans.  I'm curious to know your reactions.

THE END

It's hard to believe it's been almost two months since my last entry, though nothing has truly changed.  My life is, for the most part, still in the pits and I don't have anything to really look forward to.  With that bright and cheery start, I actually want to preface what I'm about to write by saying I have no idea of what I'm about to say.  I feel like having some brain diarrhea about certain things and just feel like hopefully this will help make sense of it all.

FAITH

What does it mean to you?

When I first hear the word faith, my thoughts immediately drift towards a more spiritualistic domain, more specifically, Christianity.  Christianity is easily the most dominant force in my life; it's the reason I don't drink, the reason I'm saving sex for marriage, the reason I spend my Tuesdays at Bible Study and Thursdays at Cru.  Yet this is not the case for many people, especially the majority of Towson University.  From what I've noticed, faith means, too a lot of people I think, confidence:  confidence in oneself, confidence in one's abilities, confidence in others, confidence in the future, etc.  For them, they have faith in what is happening in their lives, whether or not God is driving the image for them.

I have no confidence.  I know that until about 10th grade, I had an ego that was impossible to contain.  Since then, I've been working on knowing my limits, where I succeed and where I fail.  I used to believe in myself, that I could do certain things.  Towson has completely stripped me of that.  I used to think my family had a good thing going...my father has been unemployed for close to a year and we are quickly running out of money.  We will not be residents of Howard County by the end of 2009 (wow) and there's not a thing I can do about it.  I didn't always think the greatest things happened to me, but I thought what was bestowed upon me was fair.  I worked pretty dang hard in high school, I did relatively well on the SATs, I had a strong resumé and got into my first choice school.  I wind up at a crappy state school which has actually made me forget what it's like to be happy and be surrounded by friends.  I wake up every morning wishing the day was already over; I go to bed hoping that God will give me the strength to perform some sort of miracle to turn this mess around or that He will show me why he has me going through this trial.  Recently, for whatever reason, people started asking me again if I'm still unhappy at Towson....duh.  But for once, I've had answers.  I've told people how while I'm surrounded by about 16,000 people, I've never felt more alone in my entire life.  The thing I'm here to study is theatre; I find myself more and more passionate about it the more I learn.  I want to be able to be that guy who makes people cry, I want to be able to spew raw emotion in front of a completely sold out house.  Here's the kicker: I don't fit in there either.  Do you have any idea what it feels like to be rejected by the thing that you absolutely love?  I'd rather have a swift kick in the nuts.  Repeatedly.

Back to confidence...this school has taught me nothing besides the fact that I'm nothing.  I don't matter.  I knew that as humans we don't truly matter and especially compared to God, we are completely insignificant.  But in high school, at least I interacted with people and enjoyed telling myself that maybe I'm having some sort of influence in the lives of others, and that my actions might even have a positive effect.  Here, I feel like no matter what happens or what I do, everything would be just fine without me.  It's a rather grounding experience, to say the least.

Females....yahoo.  There's a girl here who I've had a thing for since maybe like October.  Her name is Amanda Ogorzalek, and yes, she was Antwoine's prom date junior year (she's not Asian).  It's probably a dumb idea to post this because apparently whenever I post about people and really don't want them to see this, they do.  Whatever.  Like I said, I'm typing my thoughts in a stream of consciousness so yay.  Anyway, there are a lot of things about her that I like: she's extremely nice, she's incredibly talented, she's fun, has a great sense of humor, she's smart, well-liked, sweet, and I would be remiss if I did not mention she is a BEAUTIFUL red-head.  We officially met each other at auditions for Towson's acting track because she recognized me as the king from Mattress.  We didn't really talk over the summer but sometimes we'd post back and forth on each other's walls on Facebook.  We had callbacks for this show in October so that was the first time I really got to talk to her, and I fell in like.  We've been seeing a lot of each other because we're both in this show though we still don't talk a ton.  We had our cast party a few hours ago and she and a couple of guys who have been hitting on her got "comfortable" with each other and pretty intoxicated (I don't know why but I'm not a fan of the word drunk).  She told us all some stuff that I won't repeat because it's definitely private info, though I'm sure if she wasn't drunk she wouldn't have said it.  Anyway, as I saw the others guys around her, I actually thought to myself "I could treat her so much better."  I'm so arrogant, I hate it.  But I guess that's how guys feel a lot when we see girls we have a thing for with another guy.  We want to believe that we're the better choice and that in the end, we'll be the ones picked from the other faces in the crowd.  Would I be able to?  Probably not.  My track record shows I'm a pretty lousy boyfriend and doubt I would be any better this time around.  What surprised me is that I even thought this.  For most of this year I've been always thinking "She'll never talk to me." or "She could definitely do so much better than me" and all the other cliché stuff.  I don't know why I suddenly had confidence to be able to feel that, but I did.

Also, a drunk girl offered to have sex with me.  While I got very uncomfortable, laughed, and started paying attention to another conversation, I'll admit it was very flattering.  I put sex on a bit of a pedestal because of my view of it:  Sex is the ultimate form of pure physicaly love.  If you take out words, gestures, and acts of kindness and go straight up neanderthal, sex is ultimate physical love.  I believe that you should only be willing to share that with one special person.  Clearly the drunk girl didn't feel the same way.  "I'm just really horny now, that's all."  *Sigh*

The theater department here is floating with faith - especially faith in each other.  There's a lot of dependence when it comes to theater and it's in no short supply at TU.  There are so many parts that go into a show and the cast and crew need faith in each other if they want things to get done.  Because I'm such a recluse, no one knows me and therefore no one has faith in me.  As a result, I've never asked to do anything, from small shows to hanging out.  And I end up losing faith in myself.

This entry was completely incoherent and I apologize.  I'm very tired.  I'll end this with saying I hope that one day I can muster up the courage to tell Amanda how I feel about her.  She's going to College Park next year so it's not like I'll see her a whole lot in the future, but sometimes you just want to them, you know?