Saint Peter Don't Ya Call Me...

.. 'Cause I can't go. I owe my soul to...

Well, lots of repentance first. Hehe.

Hi gang. Not sure what I'm going to gab about. Really don't have much to report. I've done my Homework, even am slightly ahead. Put in some extra time Friday with a study group (and we've got more planned) and wouldn't ya know conjugating adjectives is starting to make a little more sense and I might actually remember it. Alas, we've already had the test on that (and more) but I figure we're just going to build on that so I need to know it. If we can get it learned and keep up with current stuff that'd be good. *nods*

Haven't done much with Lit yet. We did that first paper. Kinda want to see how it went so I know what she's looking for. Not having been in one for a very long time, ya know, it'd be good to see what is wanted. Ya know? We were assigned the beginning of the Victorian's. Just read the intros and some of the stuff for Matthew Arnold. The intro stuff really were dichotomous. The one for his prose and critical work really seemed to show him as a Victorian while the intro for his poetry kept calling him a Romantic even though he's not seen as one most of the time. Anyhow, should be interesting to see how we deal with it. It's got to be better than Carlyle's Sartor Resartus which not only seems difficult, but was wholly uninteresting to me.

Should prove to be a strange week. In two of my classes we have MCC Assessment tests. Not sure what goes on, but apparently it takes the whole class period. One is in Lit the other in Japanese and I think they're on 2 diff days. While a break is appreciated, just going to make for a strange week. Not to mention one of my least fave holidays ever. Maybe should I ever have reason to celebrate it I might like it better, but until then -- just a miserable holiday. And then Wednesday that PS2 game, Xenosaga II, comes out. So I have to be sure to get my HW done and even get ahead of schedule so I have a little bit of time to play, heya?

Anyhow, think I'll leave this note be for now. Still haven't determined if I want to make public something that has been bothering me for a little while. Not that there is anything I can do about it myself, so I suppose I shouldn't even fret over it. Alas, never been my nature to ignore something like this.

Until next time, Keep Stompin'!

~Go

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

Boy, how true that is. Course every day I'm older than the previous one, but yesterday, of course, was the first day of my 34th year. Yup, I's 33 these days. So far the only thing that's different is... well I seem to remember even less Japansese than I did before. I just bombed my Chapter 4 written test. I know, I know, I've said I think I did poorly on exams before, but this isn't physics where I was just stressed. No, this is something I am a good 99.8% sure I absolutely butchered. For some reason all of Chapter 4 has been giving me fits. No matter how much I looked over it, nothing seemed to gel with me. Seriously, I'm looking over these questions and saying to myself, "Did we study that?"

The good news is that if you take every exam, and I will, that Ochiai sensei will drop your low test. This is good. This is VERY good. Though I still feel awful that I did so poorly and am just a wee be (read with extreme sarcasm) concerned that I'll need to know all the grammar that just didn't jive for the rest of the semester. So I don't know what I'm going to do about it but just keep going. Maybe when I *could* be studying more I'll have to and just force it in there even if it doesn't want to fit.

Doyle's creation, Sherlock Holmes, believed there was only so much space in there and not to fill it up with frivilous things. Course he also used cocaine (ever hear the 7% solution?) and I'm not about to do that. Course I also believe that we absorb a lot more than we have access to on a regular basis. Why I can't access (or couldn't) my Japanese files today is beyond me.

As it goes, I think that's all I really want to report right now. Hate to be a downer, but my therapy (writing this) will help me get over it. I do have some other news that has me a bit down too, but I'm still not sure I want to make that public fare.

So until next time -- Keep Stompin'!

~G

A Pocket Full of Posies

Welcome one and all to anouther edition of the Stomin' Ground. I'm going to complain a bit today about Carl Saga and his book The Demon-haunted World. Whether you like Sagan or think he is a total twinkie [speaking of twinkies you should all consider looking up The TWINKIES Project for a good laugh] is irrelevant. Why? Well because this is my page so I'm going to share my opinion. Hehe.

I'm a little more than halfway through this book we're reading for Future Studies. So far the first half has dealt a lot with the UFO paranoia that seems to be gripping the world, most especially the USA and disproving it. Along with all of that, Sagan suggest we can disprove and debunk a lot of other myths and beliefs along the way, including religion [big surprise there coming from Sagan *snort*].

What I find particular disturbing is one of Sagan's primary arguments: Because there is no actual, physical evidence it must not be true. How logical is that? Using the lack of evidence as evidence to the contrary. Yeah, good idea. After making this argument, he ridcules the opposing side's counter argument: because you can't disprove it, it must be so. Both arguments are a bit idiotic and very circular against one another.

One chapter deals with the idea, in a hypothetical sense, of an invisible, floating dragon with a firey breath that leaves no mark and radiates no heat living in your garage. Sagan argues that because this dragon leaves behind no actual evidence it's not real. Any evidence it does leave behind could be faked. What if you put flour on the floor and the next day a claw mark was in the flour? Well that could easily be faked and since no skeptic was ther to see it happen, it very likely was. While I myself am not a proponent of invisble, floating dragons and would be more inclined to accept the physical evidence of one as a fraud, I wouldn't say just because I wasn't there to see it that such was the case.

How many of you have been so Madagascar? How many of you believe it's really there? Hang on, let's take someplace perhaps more common. Ever been to Japan? Do you believe it's there? You've seen photographs of it, right? That's some evidence? Ahh, but photos can be easily doctored, especially in today's world of digital magic. What if you have been there, are you sure you were there? You got on a plane and flew somewhere, most likely. How do you know it was really Japan? You don't. You accept that where you landed was Japan. Reason tells you that if everyone there is speaking Japanese and all the signs are in the same language you are probably in that place, but what's the actual proof? Did you watch the flight-path of the plane from it's take off point to it's landing point? The point I am trying to make is there are all kinds of things we accept on a daily basis as being actually so when we don't have loads of experimental evidence to back them up every time we do them and some of them could be faked. We trust to things time and time again without needing or requiring proof.

Mind you I am not trying to say I am anti-science. I am not. I think science has done some wonderful things. I think there are innumerable things science does not understand and many more they do not fully understand. Many people seem to believe that science and religion are incompatible. I just don't understand this attitude. The more I learn of and about science the more it backs up my religious beliefs. The more I learn about my Heavenly Father and His plan for the world, the more I can see how science has grown so much, but still has so far to go.

It is okay, gang, to accept things on faith -- especially when that faith is backed up by an experiment anyone can conduct. The Lord does expect us to have faith, very few will have a perfect knowledge in this lifetime, but He has promised us he will tell us what is right if we will ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ. But it does require that first step, having faith. If you can't start with that, ye even no more than a desire to believe, then I suppose it won't do you any good because even if you are touched by the spirit you woudn't believe it anyway.

Because you can't prove it isn't, it must be.
Because you can't prove it is, it mustn't be.

We all have to choose what we will believe and what we won't be it pure science and only phyiscal evidence which "proves" things to the equal but opposite pole of believing anything and everything without any reason. I somehow suspect that truth falls somewhere in between. Heck, maybe Sagan is right -- but what if he's right to the point of being wrong? What if science just isn't (and won't ever be in this temporal world) advanced enough to measure, record or *prove* things we just don't understand?

Okay, there's my off the cuff treatise for the time being. Any errors in logic are caused by little green men who ride invisible floating dragons. Blame them. *rolls eyes*

HAHAHAHAHA! *cackle-cackle* Wouldn't ya know it -- within 5 pages of where I had stopped reading Sagan writes, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (p223). So for half the book he's raved about a lack of evidence and when there is evidence it's not very reliable. Apparently he realized that. Alas, one sentence after 200 pages isn't a very good defense. Anyhow I couldn't help but burst out laughing that the very thing I was complaining about he chose to note himself within just a few pages.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

So aside from my diatrbe, what's new? Well, with tests next week in Japanese the work is done, it's all study now. Though I do have that paper in English. I think I menioned I was going to do the Songs of Innocence and Experience comparison and contrast and how it fits in with the Romantic ideas in general. I should be able to do that much. I wrote out a couple of tentative outlines (very, very rough) yesterday while thinking about it and I think I can squeeze 4 pages out of it.

Future studies today. I wonder what we'll talk about this time? I didn't menion it from before but we had another one of those strange ideas presented last time. The concept that the best way to get rid of something is by ignoring it. The arguer in his article used the Greek and Norse pantheon of dieties as evicende. How many people actually worship them any more? While that's accurate I don't see how ignoring things makes anything go away. Afterall, we still know about the Greek gods and the Norse gods (that's be Odin, Thor, Loki, et al. for those of you who don't know - those of you who I know read this I suspect knew that, but what if someone doesn't?) don't we? What if we just ignore Israeli and Palestinian problems in the Middle-East? I don't think they're just going to go away. What if we'd ignored some highjacked airplanes, thousands of deaths and a couple of demolised skyskapers? Would the issue just go away? Ignoring things neither makes them always disappar over time, nor is it anywhere near close to always the proper course of action. Will it work sometimes? Sure. But don't count on it being the only or primary solution to a host of problems.

Alright I almost went off on a whole new topic. *whew* Enough. One other small bit of news then off to do more reading.

Sony finally annouced the PSP (Playstation Portable) release date and pricing scheme. It's coming in a bundle here for $250, Thursday, 24 March 2005. With all the extra stuff thrown in there I am not upset about the $50 more than I thought it would be. I had some saved up for it but now have to come up with some extra cashola. Good thing EB's got a deal goin to get some extra trade in credit right now. So I've been culling my collection of things I haven't played in a long, long time and am not likely to ever touch again. It has become financially impossible to be a collector of video games. Not that it's a bad thing. I know someone who would be very happy if I gave them up entirely, though that's not very likely to happen.

I don't know when I'll see you next. Until I do, keep rebuilding so I have something to stomp!

～ゴジラで
～ゴジラ

Love of Money is the Root of All Evil

I've a decision to make.

I have to make a choice about money. I hate money. I wish I didn't have to worry about money 'cause all it does it cause problems. Alas, the only way to not worry about it is have so much of it that it no longer means anything to you. I'm not likely to ever be in that siutation so I get the mortal and temporal joys and pains of coping with money.

Aside from needing to find a job -- which I have recently worked on -- I have the option of picking up a student loan or two that were to cover this term but would have come to late to pay the bills so I already got a loan from another source to cover that. In otherwords, I'm already in debt for school. That being said -- do I pick up one or the other of the loans?

What if this job I'm hoping for doesn't come through? How am I going to pay rent? Gas to get to school? There are no work-study dollars available this term. My financial aid paperwork went in far too late to get any. I need to get my taxes done so I can get the 05-06 FAFSA paperwork in and how to see what I can qualify for soonest. Having the loan(s) would allow me to survive if the job market decides it doesn't want me. Heck, if I can be as frugal as I have been lately, I might even be able to hang on to enough to pay most of next Fall's tuition/books. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head? Then I wouldn't have to get a loan for that.

I know, I am kind of tossing my problem out there for the general public (though only a few people I know of actually read my ramblings. Certainly saves me from having to send out several e-mails soliciting opinions sometimes -- thanks guys, especially for your comments public or private). I have to say this place isn't just for the public, it is somewhat theraputic for me to just sit and write. It often has been. Instead of a handwritten "journal" (though that still happens sometimes) I kind of have this place now so I can rant and rave or just mumble.

That's my latest quandry. Just have no idea what to do. Having paid off a debt before I am aware of what it takes to pay one off. I certainly hope I am preparing by getting an education to facilitate paying it off easier than working at a $6/hr job. Whatever way a debt is accruedd , it is an obligation, like a ball and chain that hangs on to you. I would prefer not to pick up any unnecessary debt to add to those chains. Know what I mean?

Guess that'll do it for now. Class starts in about 20 minutes. Suppose I could read some more Sagan for Future Studies. From the ruins of Tokyo this is Godzilla, signing off.

~G

Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright

Hey gang. Here I am in front of a machine that would probably drive the Romantic Poets sane. Might even have brough Coleridge out of his Opium dreams long enough to say something if he'd know about them. There are, as always, things I could be doing. However, I have all of the stuff due today done already so I thought I'd take a few minutes and write here because it's been a couple of days.

We got our first writing assignment for Lit yesterday and I am a bit beside myself with worry. I don't know how I'm going to cope with 4-5 pages of actually having to write about Romantic Poetry (from the 4 topics to choose from). I am sure I'll manage, but it's a little bit of a stress because I am so clueless when it comes to poetry. I sit in class and start to see things when we talk about them, but when reading on my own I don't really see how the Tyger is industrial England and that's such a bad, awful, scary thing. So I don't know how I'm going to write about it, but I will. If any of you are well versed in the Romantic Poets -- well Wordsworth, Blake or Coleridge anyway, we haven't touched Byron or Shelly (in class) yet, drop me a line cause I certainly wouldn't mind some help.

On the way home from school yesterday I saw on a Travelodge Suites marquee "NOW HIRING". So I turned around, went in to find out what was up and was handed and application. The gal at the desk, nice as she was, didn't know anything about the positions. So I filled it out as best I could without bringing any info with me (will have to call with a correct phone number today cause I put the wrong one down for an old job). I really, really need to get a job, so if you've got a smidge of faith to spare, I wouldn't mind a prayer or three on my behalf. There is no work-study available because I got in the 04-05 financial aid paperwork in far too late. I need to get my taxes done so I can work on my 05-06 paperwork and how.

I haven't really told anyone, but Grandpa Fred is having some problems. He has had some tests done and results are due back sometime relatively soon. We're all a bit concerned about it. I think he is too. He's lost a lot of weight and is generally just not well. We're all praying for him too. I am sure he'd love to see Hope again in the next life, but most of us aren't really ready to head there it seems. I'd be awfully scared to have to go today, or even in the next couple of months. Not that I'm worried about my own mortality, in that sense I'm still an invincible teenager, but when I get to thinking about just how imperfect I am and how much repenting I feel I need to do.... Anyhow, it's helped remind me to get on my knees sometimes so I guess that's a good thing.

Ya know, I haven't finished a book since school started. When I do have some free time I have been playing a little bit of World of Warcraft. There is a game out in 2 weeks (Xenosaga, p2) that I am interested in and another due out in April (Final Fantasy XII). I wonder if I'll have time to go through them. Since I've been trading in some old games I am not playing any more money isn't the issue because I'm not actually spending any. Time, time, time is the issue. Of course both are Role-Playing Games which tend to be more time consuming and involved than your average shooter or fighter. But then that's why I tend to like them -- big, epic stories. Imagine that, someone who likes to read enjoyes story? Amazing. Heh. Anyhow, we'll see what happens.

Guess I'll go do something else that needs doing, either more reading of my Future Studies book, or trying to get a start on my writing assignment, or perhaps even a review of some of the principles we've been going over in Japanese. I'll see ya when I see ya.

~G