Money Ain't a Thang. There's this saying in Chinese: [wealth in a family doesn't last beyond 3 generations]. The idea being that the first generation toils hard to make money. And this presumably goes on while the second generation is growing up, or at least the parents still teach their kids the value of money. By the third generation, the family fortune is well-established enough that the kids get spoiled while growing up; they've got no conception of what it's like to be poor, what it's like to actually have to earn your place in life. This is the generation that rides on the coattails of its predecessors, is prone to reckless overspending, and squandering the past generations' hard work. And by the time the third generation has kids, all the family money is gone (or soon will be), and they've gotta build their way up from scratch again.

I think I'm caught somewhere in between the proverbial third and fourth generations. Counting from my dad's side, I think I'm in the generation that gets screwed over. From my mom's side, I think I'm of the generation that's destined to waste money. (I think the saying only worked back in the day, where money really only came down one side of the family tree.) But yea, so that leaves me with kind of a precarious mindset/upbringing I think. On the one hand, I really have to make my own fortune, but cuz of the other hand, I've been raised to take things for granted. I really feel like I'm spoiled sometimes. I've never had to do a real day's work in all my life, and that's reflected in my somewhat snooty, supercilious attitude towards blue-collar work. Kinda like, yecchhh, I refuse to get my hands dirty! (Hah, I'm not really THAT bad, but I'm trying to make a point.) Anyways, so yea, when it's all added up, I think my upbringing combined with my financial circumstances is gonna lead me to a WORLD of trouble... or at least, significant hardships down the line. =/

-"You've gotta want it so bad you can TASTE it! Can you TASTE it?"
-"YEEEAAAA!"
-"What're you gonna do????"
-"EAT SPAGHETTIO'S!"
-...?? =/

It's been a long time since I've wanted anything badly. I once knew what it was like to have singular purpose; and looking back, I don't really like the ruthless, amoral, cutthroat attitude I took on to achieve my goals then. I didn't think it was so bad at the time though; and perhaps if I had actually gotten what I wanted, I would not look upon past actions with regret. (The ends justify the means, no? And without the end, the means are hard to justify.)

A worthy end brings out the best and worst in people. It's all about that purpose... otherwise you're just piddling around. The ones who play to win are the ones stretching and bending the rules. And if you can't play with the big dogs, you might as well stay on the porch. Because a rebel without a cause is street trash; a rebel WITH a purpose is... a congressman, ahahahah, j/k. And that's not to say that you can't win by playing the game straight. My point is that, you know how you try harder to win when you actually want the prize? I think that's what causes me to feel this void in my life- not having something to strive for, work for- no cause for which I want to better myself.

You know, they say the pursuit of a dream is sweeter than the dream itself. Well, without a dream in sight, life can get kinda bland. I need me a Dream. It all boils back to the fact that I don't have anything for which I'm passionate about right now. And without that, I'm doomed to keep coloring inside the lines, or even when I do stray outside the lines it's due to carelessness and not artistic endeavor. You know how writers can get writer's block when they lack inspiration? Well, I think I've got liver's block.

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives."
~Fight Club

Plain Vanilla Kinda Life. I don't live a life of great passion and purpose. I feel like I'm living just to get by, without a whole lot of flavor. It's not a very admirable way to live, yet I don't feel like I'm trying very hard to change that. It's like I'm content to be just... well... content. I haven't experienced much great happiness or crushing sadness, no great highs or lows; everything's just kinda middle-ish. And yea, they say "you gotta take the sweets with the sours," but sometimes I can't help but think that that's better than this bland, flavorless existence of mine now. People always say, "Don't worry, it'll be alright. Things'll work out okay." ...but that's just it. Perhaps life is only meant to be "alright" for some of us, not spectacular.

And I've been thinking, maybe what it boils down to is that I don't deserve to be happy- I haven't worked hard enough for it, I haven't wanted anything enough. Yea, I'll want, but not with passion, not with purpose. I keep expecting everything nice to kinda just fall into my lap. Well, judging by where I stand, IT'S NOT WORKING! I've ended up with nothing, and I really have no one to blame but myself.

I gave up trying to change the world some time ago. I no longer feel like I have the power or the potential to be anything great. So here I stand, living my humdrum life, passing the days in mediocrity. We aren't all destined to live fairy tale lives, and at some point, you gotta consider that perhaps you're just the NPC-type character in someone else's epic hero story, romance novel, adventure book, rags-to-riches tale.

"because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars"
~Jack Kerouac - On the Road

...yea, I wish I were like that. =/

It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye. I had effectively quit computer gaming for over a year- the last time I'd played anything was middle of spring semester junior year. I'd gotten halfway through Vampire : The Masquerade - Bloodlines and kinda just stopped. It's an interesting storyline (and I tend to like almost anything vampire-themed anyways), but for some crazy reason, the load times were unbearable on my computer. Anyways, so then I went overseas for half a year, then was too busy my last semester of school to play. After school ended, I finally had a chance to pick up where I left off with this game. And I got to maybe the last 5% of the game, and it crashes. Every time I get to a certain part. Omg, the frustration was unbearable. I'd been waiting literally years to find out what happens, and then I get cheated out of an ending by glitchy software, BAH! The kinda feeling where you wanna smack your computer around a bit, if only that would help. Blarrrgggg.

So, reeling from the episode with the vampire game, I needed another game to satiate my computer gaming fix. I picked up Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 (KotOR2). It was alright I guess. The first one definitely had a better storyline, and in an RPG, that's kind of a big deal, ya know? This one had slightly better gameplay, but it felt like a sequel just for the sake of a sequel.

You know, I came to the realization some time ago that I'm really all about storyline in games I play. (I really like reading/hearing stories, in general.) For example, real-time strategy games like WarCraft and StarCraft, where the emphasis is obviously on the battle portion of the game, I tend to like playing single player, then cheat my way through the campaigns just to see how the story plays out. To me, the battles are just a chore you have to go through to find out what happens to the characters. Thus, I'm just NOT that interested in perfecting my techniques and skills to be very good at games for the sake of gaming. That's why on games like Diablo, I tend to choose characters like the barbarian- the brute force ones that take the least amount of skill to play, just simple point-and-click action. Never really been one for strategy I guess. I do what I mean and am never particularly sneaky about it. Fighting games too, I suppose- I'm never subtle or patient enough to think out a real gameplan. I just like to button mash and hope something cool happens. I pretty much NEVER use the block button (, which is kind of funny, cuz that's the exact opposite of how I usually fight in real life). But yea, I remember as a kid, I was usually as content to watch other kids playing videogames as I was to play myself; never the type to be like, "Let meeeeeee play!" I mean, I still got to find out what happens, and I didn't need to get my thumbs all tired and callused, heh. And I dunno, maybe all this says something about my personality- that I'm content to watch from the sidelines, that I'm not one for sneaky plans... but at the same time, maybe I'm one to dig for the truth and reasoning behind things, like to see the bigger picture. I dunno, interpret it how you will, I guess.

666... (Day of the) Beastly

Save the Congrats... Failure. So graduation came and went, and I thought all was well- my grades certainly weren't anything to be proud of, but I thought I'd passed and that was all I cared- I was ready to move on with my life... I thought. So the weekend of graduation, I got an email from a professor accusing me of "unethical practices" on an assignment, had referred the case to student judicial services, and as a result I would likely fail his class. Not just the assignment, the whole COURSE. I opened the email the morning of graduation... yea, to say the least, it kinda soured the mood of the whole day for me. Like, "Hey SURPRISE, you DON'T graduate!"

I was accused of a number of infractions, and in my own defense, most of them were false... Well, "most" doesn't amount to a hill of beans. So the assignment was a powerpoint presentation, and to save myself some time, I used a team member's presentation as a template for my own so I'd know what all needed to be in it. (This course was structured so teams had access to every member's work, so we'd know what each other was doing.) So I took a team member's and started copy/pasting my own graphs and figures over his, using his table formatting, then did a save as to make it my own file... apparently you're technically not allowed to do that. Those were several of the counts against me. However, I apparently missed two graphs that I failed to copy/paste over. I talked with student judicial services, and that alone was the only "evidence" they needed for this thing to be case closed.

Funny... student judicial services. Bah. Basically, once a case is referred to them, it's game over. Even if the professor wants to take it back, they can't anymore. And maybe I was just angry and distraught when I went in to talk to them, but in all honesty, at NO point did it ever seem like they were trying to help me out of my situation. Just like how I feel about lots of the councils, committees, and organizations around campus- this whole thing is just for show. It's a charade of making it seem like some kind of democratic thing where you get a fair hearing, when in all actuality, the gavel has already been struck. The burden of proof lies with the defense. They have a "zero tolerance" policy against scholastic dishonesty, which means anything even just remotely questionable can get you failed. (They said, "otherwise you get into the debate of: how much cheating is alright?" And "cheating" is kind of a loaded word to begin with, isn't it?) So cuz of this blind bureaucracy, your case, big or small, regardless of the repercussions, results in the same penalty- you fail the course.

So a small part of a small assignment, which I believe was a completion grade, causes me to fail. Ugggghhh, trying to save myself 20 minutes could end up costing me an entire semester. =( HOPEFULLY I can negotiate a special situation where I can make something up in the summer. But in the worst case scenario, this mistake could end up costing me a LOT of money. My scholarships ended, and I didn't apply again for financial aid. Add to that like half a year's worth of lost wages due to postponed job start date, and this could end up costing like 40K... yea, sheisty. But HOPEFULLY it won't come to that.

Yea, I guess my overlooking those 2 graphs was a boneheaded move, but it won't change the fact that I'll always use templates to save time when I can. This situation really teaches me nothing. Am I sorry for what I did? Yea, I guess- seeing as how I got screwed over. Will I change my ways becasue of this? No. I didn't do what I did as a conscious attempt to get away with anything sneaky, it was an honest mistake and now I'm paying for it, hard. It was an accident, but I guess sometimes people even get killed cuz of accidents. =/

*Ok, so I've worked out a deal where I complete a summer project, and we call it even, and they let me graduate. Not great, but better than the alternatives, I suppose.