Holy-day

There is something disgusting about the way that America commercializes all the major holidays. I know it's been said before but if I don't say it, I won't be able to stand myself in the morning so here we go.

On a scale of one to ten, Thanksgiving isn't really that bad. Give it a five. Most of the hype that Turkey Day gets is in the form of sports events or shopping the day after. It's less about the holiday and more about the associated events. Of course, that could be because there is no gifting directly associated with Thanksgiving. No candy, no flowers, and no gifts. So the manufacturers made the day after the big day because you are now "Running out of time before X-mas."

So we go shopping. Hell, I go shopping. The deals are great and aside from the legions of bargain hunters it is very easy to have a good time. You shop, you buy and you get that perfect gift. Not a bad time in my book. The problem is those legions of shoppers. What could be a perfect day spent shopping with friends or family becomes a rat race to clear the bargain bin and snag the veritable Blue Light Special. It becomes this orgy of consumerism at its worst. People stop thinking of others and start looking for the items that they just "Have to have." And to at insult to injury, Christmas is a month away!

I guess I just want to say, do your shopping later. Let the feeling of the season sink in. Even if the event that Thanksgiving is based on is total mook, it doesn’t mean that we can't make something of it. Take a breath and smell the pumpkin pie.

Have a very happy Thanksgiving all.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Nota Bene

I will be heading down to Texas for the week, so the blog is taking a few days off. Posts will start up again no sooner than Monday. Later.

Madonna of the Dancefloor

So the new Madonna CD came out today and I was up at 3 am leeching the CD off the P2P networks. I love the CD. The whole thing is very Euro and great. ABBA samples, trance vibes and Madonna's vocals. And best of all, no annoying Madonna Rap. Where's the down side? Well... there is the fact that she's still wearing that irritating red string on her wrist. Crazy Hollywood cult Kabala.

Anyway, check out Confessions on a Dance Floor, the new Madonna album. I give it a 9 out of 10 but I like dance music so take it with a grain of salt.

I don't really have the energy to post the rest of the blog right now but you can look forward to next time when I try to prove that God cannot exist because of Theists trying to prove that he exists. The irony is delicious.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Exodus from LIfe

Ok so maybe exodus is a bit extreme but I think a break from life would be really great right now. Oh well. On to the blog.

I have noticed that many people pretend to be much stupider than they really are. For example, the majority of my Lit 112 class are intelligent if not eloquent students who do their reading and, more often than not, have great insights into the text. However, the class usually remains silent while a few people speak their minds. The phenomena is not unique to my Lit class. Even in high school, there was an aversion to speaking out in a class. Previously I believed that this was caused by students not wanting to appear dumb if they got an answer wrong but I am beginning to believe that there may be an aversion to appearing smart.

One of the students in the class piqued my interest when he inadvertently made some very astute observations about the nature of love while discussing some sonnets. Normally he would spend his class time making fun of the reading and chatting about whatever parties were going on and even after making the observations I mentioned, he clammed up and made fun of his own answers.

When I think about it, it kind of makes sense. Our culture is back-flowing from the kind of social/political awareness that was rampant in the Sixties and Seventies. In an era of mass information sharing, the individual’s knowledge becomes less important than the data of the collective. Culturally speaking, this has manifested in a trend away from the abstract intellectual arts and a focus on "busy-work" subjects like math and science. But among the youth, a trend to appear less intelligent in general is coming into existence. From the Rap and Hip-Hop artists advocating "getting stupid" on the dance floor to individual students choosing to remain silent in class, the trend is becoming almost epidemic.

Socrates put forth a method of teaching, known as the Socratic Method, that encouraged every student to speak his or her mind in a commune like setting of teachers and students. Socrates believed that it was essential for every student to make the idea his own before the knowledge was understood. In the modern education system, which encourages memorization and repetition of facts, the concept of wisdom and personal growth are erased by systematic implantation of data. The problem that we have faced for years is now being compounded by students refusing to take part in what interactive portions of class exist today.

I don't have the answers to this problem but realizing that there is a problem is half the battle, right? That being said, I do my best to speak up every day in every class I take. It's not much, but it's a start.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Uber Rant 01

Long time no see. Rant time. Duck. I hate alcohol. I hate the culture it breeds. I hate what it does to people. I hate what it does to my room! Total hatred. I decided to go dancing on Saturday and myself and a few friends went to a local nightclub/bar where the dance floor tends to be pretty hot. It was great until around 1:00 AM when the number of really drunk people started to outnumber the number of tipsy people and no fewer than six girls crashed into me while falling to the ground. Do NOT wear heels when drinking! Now I don't drink, so I was perfectly sober at this point. Everything just went downhill from there. The whole place got really crowded and we took off. I got back to my dorm at 2:30ish and opened my door to find my roommate had vomited all over the floor and promptly passed out without doing even a basic cleanup. I promptly left the room and spent the night in a friend's room. Later I would discover that one of my texts had been vomited on and my computer bag had been splashed. When I came back in the morning, my roommate had cleaned up a little but the room still smells bad 2 days later. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but he has a responsibility, as do I, to keep the room livable and comfortable for both of us. If someone is unable to keep control of himself then he shouldn't be in the room.

As a means of solving the problem, I have requested that he no longer come to the room when he is drunk. He is a member of a fraternity (where he does a lot of his drinking) and can find a room there. I do not believe I am being very unreasonable here. If he cannot maintain the self-awareness to keep the room clean or at least clean up after himself, he should not be in the room.

More annoying than the physical disgust that I am incurring, is the extreme depression I have knowing that my roommate is one of the people who gets terribly drunk. I cannot directly fault underage drinking because too many of my friends do it and are, for the most part, none the worse for wear. However, there is a difference between social drinking and Drinking. I cannot abide the mass consumption of alcohol by anyone. Friends or myself. To consume liquor to the point of total loss of control is unacceptable.

For the first time in my life, I find myself supporting the prohibition movement and that is absolutely unacceptable.

Written in hate,
Lyrinoir