0 comments Pirates are sexy

I tend to forget that I have a blog. I really should keep you up to date on things because it also helps me keep track of my life.

Recently, I've been getting my life back on track. I have a new job, a new car, and I'm saving up money for a few trips around the country and a move to Seattle. In mental terms, I've been becoming more stable, or at least I think. My doctor is thinking about switching me to a new medication because I've too many side effects, which is going to be a pain.

The latter half of last year has been absolutely terrible, but I'm recovering. I've taken up enjoying the simple things: lighting up incence, a cup of tea, some coffee, a screwdriver at night, music, and pajamas. Gone are the days of serious gaming and programming. I just can't handle either one anymore.

That's all for now. Maybe I'll tell you about my plans to travel to California next time.

With love,

1 comments Wasting Time

Sitting in a dark room with only the monitor for light, my legs crossed on my chair, and listening to the key strokes, the hum of the computer, and the occasional coyote howl in the night, I wonder: what are other people elsewhere in the world doing? It's 2:14 AM and I'm not a bit tired. Maybe it's because I had cereal two and a half hours ago, maybe it's because I'm enthralled with clothes shopping online, or maybe I'm impatient with my sleep time.

Days go by, minute by minute, hour by hour, and nothing gets done. Sleep forwards this time by several hours in the day. So I've taken measures to increase the hours in the day at which I can get more done. And yet, what am I doing with this time? Window shopping for clothes. Do we waste more time when we gain more time? If I had little time to spare, would I get more done? These thoughts are most frustrating.

0 comments The Return

I'm back, and doing much better. As for Ripley, she's been in the middle of moving for the past couple months. Yeah, it takes her that long to get settled. Now hopefully L&T can get back on track.

So, I was sitting in the ever comfortable leather chair without arm rests when I was asked, "What is it you want to do with your life?"

I said to my psych, "I want to make an imprint of myself into the world. That could mean anything, I realize, but to me, that sums up what I've been thinking for the past couple years. I want to make a film. I want to make a national monument. I want to write a novel. I don't want to do all of these things, but I'd like to do just one, just one to make my vision or dream somehow cast onto society so that people will look back and try to imagine what my life was like."

My psych was still listening silently.

"I could settle for a novel, perhaps. At least I'd get a better idea of what to do once I had taken such a step. It'd be like reaching the top of a mountain and finally being able to see down below where the great valleys, and rivers, and fields of grass and trees rest."

"So then why don't you do it?" He asked.

"The problem is that I constantly fall into these states where I don't believe anything I do can push me forward towards my goals in life. I just get into situations where all I can do is sit, listen to music, and wait for the days to pass by until I can muster enough energy to even eat. I'm exaggerating of course, I do eat every day, or at least I try, but it really is difficult to muster enough energy to do anything. The problem is that I think too much on my future."

"Sometimes you just need activities to get your mind off things. Or even people to talk with. Just pick up your phone and call someone. You don't have to speak about what's been pulling you down, or anything remotely important for the matter."

He was right to point that out. I haven't had anyone to talk to in a long time. Nobody ever calls me anymore, and I don't call anyone else anymore either. And I haven't been gaining friends. On the contrary, I've been losing them as the time passes by. I've lost everyone that I normally talk with, and I scarcely ever talk with my current friends. My cousin, for example, I am credibly calm around and short of words. I always have been. It's weird because I'm not like that with most people.

So then, why does all of this happen? It happens because I look for things in my life where they don't exist, or at least no longer do. It's time for change.

0 comments K. Rabbit's Hiatus

I'll be leaving L&T for a while to fix some issues in my life. The elephant has to go. I won't return until everything has been resolved.

0 comments Harsh Confession

I've been in a constant depression for several weeks now, probably a little over a month. In response, I've been turning to times spent at the bar, drawing, and actively pursuing hang-out times with friends, or just people to talk to. I've also been to the bowling alley at least once and I've gone to a few restaurants during this time frame. It's been a little more money spent than what I would've liked, but for the sake of my mental health, it was worth it. Slaying fellow students at class with a machete isn't exactly an option.

On the bright side, I think I'm finally certain what the cause is, and what I can do to remedy it. I'm a little saddened to find out what it really is, but happier to know I can fix this. You see, I've been denying myself the truth, refusing to admit what the problem really was. Strangely though, I never once thought of it before. Perhaps my subconscious didn't like the idea.

Whatever the reason for my blindness, what matters here is that for one to truly fix one's own problems, one has to admit that there actually is a problem to begin with. This can be a harsh reality.

0 comments Rain Rain Rain

It's either been raining or over cast for about three weeks now, nonstop. There really wasn't a transition for the end of Fall, either. It was just, "bam," rain; however, I have enjoyed it. It reminds me how much I love being indoors where it's warm and cozy, and of all those small pleasures that are overlooked, like hot chocolate. It's funny because about a year ago, exactly this time last year, I was expressing to Ripley how much I hated Washington weather so much. I absolutely hated the rain. Why is that funny? I couldn't say exactly but I do find it interesting how passions shift over time.

And for the record, I dislike it when people complain about the weather, no matter how screwed up it can be outside.

0 comments Oh, Time

It's frustrating when the days become shorter as Winter approaches. As they get shorter, you feel like there's more and more things to do and less and less time to do it all in. What's even worse is when I'm always constantly putting off homework (Oh, hi, I'm a college student) to doodle, chatter with friends, or writing for silly blogs. Maybe I'll invent a cloning machine to clone myself so that everything actually gets done. But then I'd be forced to battle myself to the death for my love. Would that be considered suicide?

0 comments Denial's & Unrequited Love

Denial. It's something that strikes us all at one point or another. Yet it seems to hurt the most (and leaves a lasting impression) when we're denied in a romantic sense. It leads to self questioning.

Am I good enough?

What's wrong with me?

I'm ugly, aren't I?

Or creepy maybe?

et cetera

However, I believe denial is the key to truly moving on from someone. Being denied leads to crushed hopes and dreams, of course. It requires time to move on from that, of course. You may pine over the person for days, weeks, or months and years after, but you know you'll eventually move on, and probably for the better. (Though, if you're my friend named Lillian, you're probably fucked.)

Now what is “unrequited love?” We've all heard the term, I hope. Unrequited, first off, means “not returned or reciprocated.” So from that, we learn that this love isn't returned for whatever unstated (or sometimes stated) reason. Maybe the person really is ugly, creepy, etc. Or perhaps the circumstances have something to do with it.

This begs the question, though, would you rather have un-reciprocated love or would you rather never fall in love?


I would rather never love at all. It's nearly a form of torture to have your love un-reciprocated. You know what love is, you feel it vividly, yet you're powerless to do anything about it. You can't say a word to the person in fear of ruining a perfectly good friendship. You can't touch them without some sort of desire jolting through you. You can't even look at them or speak with them without remembering how much you love them.

1 comments Work, or How the Government Steals My Money

To be completely honest, my job sucks. I work as a cashier at a local, shitty store. It's a fruit market, of course. What we sell? Well, obviously, fruit, but we also carry an array of other bizarre items. What does this bring in? An array of customers. And what does that mean? They're all fucking weird.

Weird customers? Golly galoshes, Ripley, that must be exciting!!

Frankly, it isn't. I've been yelled at in Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, et cetera. For doing my god damned job. Is there something morally wrong with being a cashier that I should know about? Did they see me smoking outside and are worried about my health? Did I accidentally run a puppy over on my way to work? (If I did, I don't remember.) But honestly, why? It is rarely ever the cashier's fault. Really, it isn't. We just fucking beep things across glass all day.

Then, besides the weird customers, there are the overly emotional ones that need to tell you about how their lives are terrible. When I ask, "Hey there! How're you doing today?" with a fake smile plastered to my face, I really mean, "Sup, throw your shit on the belt, tell me you're fine and get out real quick-like." I don't want you to bitch about how your mother, sister, or cat is in the hospital. Or how much it sucks to be old.

I don't care, for the most part. Tough shit, there's worse things in life.

Next time, let's explore empathy, or Ripley's lack thereof.

0 comments Comic #4 Rejection

0 comments The Writer or the Elephant?

Life is a constant struggle of choices; some easy while others exemplify a confounding variety. Suppose you’re presented with the choice of cake. You open up the fridge, and you gander over yonder towards a delicious cheese cake sitting right there on the second shelf. Observe the Oreo crust and how it elegantly decorates the chocolate cheesecake flavor with its crumby goodness. One side of you, the elephant side, says, “I’m going to devour this entire fucking platter,” while the other side of you, the writer side, says, “I’ll only take one slice from this cake.” Which one takes hold of you? Which one wins in this incredibly confounding dilemma?

We must first take a look at both sides of this argument. The writer represents the voice of reason in your tiny noggin, while the elephant represents your animalistic urges and feelings. These two forces govern all of our actions on a day-to-day basis in our lives. It is often difficult to discern between the two. More often than not, the elephant is confused for the writer. When you eat the entire cheesecake in the fridge, the elephant has taken hold while the writer tries to excuse the action after the fact. Because the writer has excused the action, we think that it was the writer’s choice to eat the cake. In reality, it was the elephant that wanted the cake, because it’s a big monster that loves sweets.

For difficult conundrums where you’re unsure as to which force controls which, a good rule of thumb is that if the action in question is illogical or backed with little to no reason, then the action is being governed by nothing but feeling, nothing but the elephant. The question is really this: Will you let reason control feeling or let feeling control reason?

But why does all of this matter? Why should you be concerned with any of this? What matters is if you are happy with your choices.

0 comments The Toll of Romance

How far does one go forward with a romantic relationship when their partner has established a second romantic relationship with another? The implication with this question here is that the second romance was permitted by the first but doesn’t necessarily mean it’s desirable. It’s essentially a question of tolerance before one snaps and maims inanimate objects. These are very specific circumstances but the answer remains the same for many questions dealing with “how far does one go” with regards to romantic relationships: it all depends on the established boundaries that have been agreed upon by both partners.

But the problem with many relationships is the lack of established boundaries. Or perhaps the lack of respect for said boundaries. It’s one of these two, I’m sure of it.

2 comments Love; The Singular Definition of

Love cannot be defined. You may ask yourself, “How can we talk about something that can't be defined?” The answer is that there are so many different ways to define and describe love that there is no one definite way of saying what is right, wrong or bizarre in love. Everyone has different views and opinions on what love is and what it involves. It could possibly be seen as heinous to try and attach a single sentence to what love is. Love, the feeling not some biological mumbo jumbo, is purely opinionated. - Ripley

The problem here with approaching love with relativism lies under the very nature of relativism itself and we're quick to run into a few flaws in the implied logic.

If I were to look at a monkey, and I said it was a cat, and another person looked at that same monkey and said it was a dog, then who is right? Me? The other person? Both? The answer is that neither of us are right. The monkey is still a monkey. Regardless of the fact that we look at the monkey differently, it does not change what the definition of the monkey is. The only thing that changes is the perception of it. In other words, the existence of something is not conditional or opinionated. It either is or it isn't. We can spend all day arguing about what the monkey is but it doesn't change what the monkey actually is.

If multiple people defined love differently from each other and all were correct, then we lose the common ground of what love is. It would lose its meaning, and there would be no word associated with it to begin with. At this point, trying to define what love is would be like trying to describe what God says to his children. With no common ground amongst people to agree on, I could realistically state that love is nonexistent. But love does exist. We all feel it, there's no question about that. But how do we see love? Is there any evidence other than what we feel? Certainly! We witness this every day through the actions of happy partners, through the expressions of their love.

Many people confuse love for an expression or reaction, like sex. If I were to have sex with someone, does that mean I love that person? No. But can sex be an expression of love? Absolutely. Sex is sometimes sanctioned away from love into its own category so let's have a look at some other actions that tend to be overlooked. Expressions (and note that I'm using this word interchangeably with “reactions”) of love can include making your partner breakfast every morning, staying up real late at night while waiting for your partner to come home from work, or writing little poems on their body when they're sleeping so they can read them in the morning. Others could be a change of lifestyle, thoughts, and overall feelings. The possibilities are seemingly endless, but do any of these expressions mean I love my partner? No; these actions could just be lust. But can they be expressions of love? Yes!

One person once told me that beating your partner with a bat can legitimately be called love. That doesn't make any sense, does it? It's true that some people will actually beat their loved ones as a disciplinary action because of their love. But love cannot be synonymous with these expressions, such as violence, else I could walk into an orphanage, start beating children into submission, and call it “love” without ever being wrong. It is very important to not confuse love for expressions of love.

Love is an emotion, a feeling towards another person or object. But what is that feeling? Love. Ripley said that it could be “...heinous to try and attach a single sentence to what love is.” This is truer than spoken. You cannot define love as anything in the English language but with its associated word: love. Love is love, and the question should not be, "What is love?" but rather, "What causes it?” and, “How do we express it?" These are the things that vary between people and must be watched for, not love.


Click here for the original blog post by Ripley.

0 comments Comic #3 Keep Your enemies Closer?

0 comments Comic #2 Beware of Strangers

0 comments Blog Updates

Just a few things to announce...

First of all, within the near future, Life and Torment will be moving to a new web address away from blogspot.com, but fear not! Those of you who have http://lifeandtorment.blogspot.com bookmarked will be automatically redirected to the new address.

Secondly, as most of our current visitors will have noticed, some significant design changes have taken place, the most noticeable of which being the name change (again). This is to more accurately reflect the nature of our content that we throw at you guys. Hopefully, this will be the final time this happens.

Thirdly, lastly, and most importantly, we should be resuming to our original weekly updates. WOO! But no specific day of the week has been chosen yet. NOO! So stay tuned for more info.

0 comments Comic #1 Heart Attack Awareness

0 comments Unrelenting Passion

I've been working on a roleplay game server with its own setting and rules for a few years now. In its currently complete state, it is everything as I had envisioned it to be from when I first started coding it together: a decently sized player base, a working staff that puts in enough effort to maintain the storyline, and a horror setting with greyed moralities. Initial construction took me approximately six months before it went online. After that point, others with their own visions jumped in and helped it along the course of the years, working on it very much like a painting that is never completed.

In the past year, however, my will to continue this piece of art has been something of a struggle. Of course, it's always been a struggle, but nothing like now. It's true that the initial vision is still being fulfilled, but after seeing it emerge from the depths of my mind, I do not like it. One of the visionaries who contributed a great deal (and whose vision is remarkably close to mine) once said in reference to the game server, “There's a time when you have to realize your painting's a piece of shit, and it's better to move on.” It was painful hearing those words, and it made me question whether or not I should continue on, despite the conflict against one of my most cherished beliefs: unrelenting passion.

What is unrelenting passion? Well, firstly, a passion is a love or hatred for something or someone. It requires an interest, and it conveys an opinion and an expression for that interest. An example would be, say, if I had a passion for chocolate icecream. The interest would be chocolate icecream, the opinion would be that chocolate is the best variety of icecream, and the expression would be that I'd most likely be pigging out on it. Now, with unrelenting passion, it's nothing like favoritism; it's much more than that. I'm talking about hoarding it in my freezer for years to come like a fucking Mormon. An unrelenting passion is a deep expression of the soul, because it doesn't give up without a fight. In a way, it can even be used to measure the depth of the soul, the depth of character.

I firmly believe that a big problem in this world is that people don't give a damn. Or at least, too many don't give enough of one; they don't give enough of their own soul into the progressive cause of life. There's not enough people pushing themselves into writing their novels, going out of their way to taste every variation of their favorite drink, or constructing that perfect stage performance. It's all a lack of interests, love, and hate, and within their absence, there is only apathy and stagnation. We end up with bleak lifelessness. We end up with dudes in the office who wonder just where the hell their life went by over the years, go through a mid-life crisis, and take a fireaxe to the fax machine down the hall.

All of this comes from a perspective I've developed as someone who takes an incredible amount of time pushing a pencil on paper to construct a picture out of nothing but the recesses of my mind. People always tell me, “I could never draw that good,” or, “I'm not skilled and never will be,” when they see my own artwork, but they fail to see that it takes patience, time, and effort to achieve something. The greatest of films, of landmarks, of writings, of everything are crafted by the hands of one who has the patience and the willingness to project their vision, even in bad times.

You see, I love, I obsess, and I am unrelenting. I'm that type of person that scales my love's apartment building and places a sonnet on the outside of their window. There is no room for giving up or letting discouragements get in my way, even if it means wringing someone by the neck so I can make brownies. To go to these great lengths can be just as painful as fulfilling, however. There's nothing quite like having your brownies that you've specially made for someone refused because they had walnuts in them, or to have anything else you've done gone unnoticed. It happens enough to make me feel like I'm the only one who does these things. Unfortunately, this perspective of me is not something that can be removed or altered; it's been with me since I was a child and it'll be with me til I die.

Yes, it may be a bit silly to throw all of this onto a simple game server, but every little part of life, no matter how small, should never be done without putting in the full extent of your heart.

0 comments Love; The Views of

Love cannot be defined. You may ask yourself, “How can we talk about something that can't be defined?” The answer is that there are so many different ways to define and describe love that there is no one definite way of saying what is right, wrong or bizarre in love. Everyone has different views and opinions on what love is and what it involves. It could possibly be seen as heinous to try and attach a single sentence to what love is. Love, the feeling not some biological mumbo jumbo, is purely opinionated.

The most noticeable traits about humanity is that we have wars, violence and death that are now generally thrown with full force at us from the media. However, there is also love and acceptance that all humans seem to strive for. We have songs and shows and movies and novels dedicated purely to love and sex.

Some people even put more faith in love than faith in any higher power. My only guess at why this could be is that it's the hope that one day said person could fully connect and know another living being. Many of us have probably experience love in one way or another – love for a family member or friend, a pet, a childish crush.

Some may argue that it isn't love. That love in no way, shape, or form even exists. I do not intend to make it seem as if I have any right saying that it does or does not, I'd just like to carefully lay out what everyone I've spoken to thinks and believes. I have received both short and humorous replies and in-depth replies, as well. The variety of responses will hopefully reveal different paths and thoughts about love that most of us haven't even dreamed of.

"What is your idea of love?"

GB:

A ridiculous bond between people that defies all logic and basically throws common sense out the window, but a basic necessity.

WT:

She reminds me of the first time I discovered masturbation. That's how you know it's true love.

TF:
That's a hard one...I guess it can't be put into words. It's just something wordless.

SL:

I don't know. I kind of think of it as something both infuriating and cool at the same time. I kind of agree with Chris Rock, love is kind of a fine line between itself and hate. At some points you get so mad you want to kill the other person, but then you get the other extreme where you can't imagine living without them. I think deep down everybody has an idea of someone that they fall in love with and at times the person doesn't mesh with that idea so you get super angry with each other because you can't understand why you don't see eye to eye. And I think if you consider love in the long term sense, it's being able to reconcile that idea you have with the person you're with.

VJ:

I'm not sure what you want me to say, like that if I think its real or not? Or that it's like a chemical response in your brain? ...Well I see love as kind of like when you spend time with someone, or realize your attracted to them your body makes like a chemical that makes you happy (maybe? i dont really know) and you remember the feeling it gives you and it makes you want to be with the person more. That's my guess. I don't really know...does that make sense?

PR:

Well that's a bit random. My idea of love? Hmmm. I guess for me it was finding someone who I could see spending the rest of my life with through thick and thin. I mean, I also have a girlfriend. I don't know. It's more then just fucking. [Love] makes me feel great. I remember when I was dating that I always wanted to spend time with the person I loved.

CZ:

Honesty, loyalty, monogamy and, of course, actual love for the person. Its hard to describe love, I think love is a type of insanity. But it's a good type...sounds corny and stupid but you don't need to know its exact science, you just feel it. That's what I think and how I feel about it, at least. Two different type of love too, love you can have for your family and friends and romantic love; for me both are pretty strong. I do think romantic love is a tad more powerful though, you can share feelings and thoughts with a friend but when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend and you engage in something sexual or intimate, it makes things more serious. Sex is when you let down all your walls and barriers and you let another person "see you."

LL:

Feeling of and expression of attraction to another for various reasons. Anything that makes you attracted to another person. I have my love down pretty well, I think. Just that while some may think crushes are not love, I disagree. It's just blind love. Everyone loves another to a certain degree and they want to try and show it in a way appropriate for the type of relationship. Also, it's not some magical force but nor is it a confusion for the need to mate. I think people find it difficult to define in most cases because there's little to compare it to. It's so unique.

GP:

Giving someone the power to hurt you and hoping that they don't. Allowing someone to make you feel both incredibly happy and incredibly sad or angry, someone who is like an emotional steroid for you, someone who makes you feel not only alive but alive as a human. It's something much more complicated than fuzzy hug and kisses and stuff. Love is a complicated state of affairs that is as beautiful as it is harsh. That's my idea of it.

LN:

It's to always speak your feelings, always go for a hug, always cheer, always be there, always be honest, but in the end it only confuses people. It freaks them out, or it makes them indifferent. And then they begin to think if it's all true. And they think too hard. So in the end, they realize that true love doesn't exist, when in reality, it does if you WANT it to be. I realized that not a single time she ever believed or even considered that I would leave all my friends and family behind for her.

The thing that stunned me, and perhaps continues to do so, is that very few people mentioned sex. In no way do I think they all totally exclude sex, but I think there is some different path of thought for many in this particular group that involves a need for their version of love with their sex.

This also raises a potentially hypocritical point: How can you believe so absolutely in love, but brush aside a god or religion on some scientific grounds? I would like to say it's because we all experience those small crushes, those infatuations with someone else. We witness others loves daily, as well. We see kissing and hugging and the smiles of pure joy that light faces when they see someone dear to them. It may not be absolutely scientific but it is something every single person feels.

Personally, what I believe is this:

Love is a thing that must be experienced. It shouldn't be explained away by science or put on a time table. There are different tiers of love, at the very top is a mix of absolute trust and absolute love. That one top tier is the one people seem to strive for because it means complete and total acceptance and trust without any fear of rejection. It's about being more than a just a best friend or just a lover, it's about being a mixture of the two. And sex? Sex is about absolute trust, which, for me, requires absolute love.

0 comments The Choice of Addiction

When people think of addictions, they think of alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. But does anyone think about food, sleep, or other necessities in life? Can one be addicted to food? Most certainly. But what defines the boundary setting apart addiction from life's necessities? To the addicted, the substance used has become a dependency of living, hence the term "substance dependence"; one is dependent upon consuming food and one who is addicted to alcohol is dependent upon its consumption. The defining factor here between these two, however, is choice.

The line between addiction and necessity blurs when one is never presented the option of leaving his addiction. If one smoked for his entire life and never realized he could stop, then why would he ever? At that point, smoking would simply be a small, yet required, part of his every day life. When this happens, when and how does one snap out of it to face the truth?

In the 1999 film, The Matrix, Morpheus offers a choice to the protagonist, Neo, to take two pills with opposing results. In one hand, he held the blue pill, and said, "the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe," while in the other hand was the red pill, where he said, "you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." This was a choice of fantasy versus reality. In the film, Neo chose reality and came to know the harsh truth that came with it. Later on, he asked Morpheus if he could ever return; his answer resulting in another question, "Would you ever want to?"

Do we all have such an opportunity to take a red pill? And if we do, would we take it, knowing full well that we may jeopardize the safety of our dream world by doing so? After realizing the harsh truth of reality, one may indeed be tempted by fantasy, wishing he had taken the blue pill instead, the addiction.