The Return

So, just like the other 95 percent of lazy people that think "hey, writing a blog is a good idea!"  I wasn't able to commit because 1)What I was trying to do was like impossible, 2) I kind of realized after talking with somebody that it wasn't even a good idea, and 3) I'm bad at following through with things.  So, uh, yeah.

I've decided there aren't gonna be any real rules on this, now.  I'll just update it whenever.  That'll probably damn it to hell again, but in that case it was destined to be damned.

Since I'm kind of redefining how this thing works, I've decided to rename the blog.  Don't have any good ideas yet.  I almost fell into the incredibly cliched pothole that would be taking inspiration from Socrates' quote: "The unexamined life is not worth living."  Which, while being a good quote, HAS to be overused.

Don't expect this to be organized, either.  It's just a smattering of thoughts that I have.

-How do you define a couple?  Does it strictly mean two, or is it a small indeterminate number?  Is one more correct than the other?  I don't know.  You tell me.  I'm on the small, indeterminate side.

-The people I've heard speak in the last two weeks were Bill Ferris and Elie Wiesel, at least one of whom you obviously know.  Bill Ferris is a prominent folklore professor and basically pioneered field recordings, making an incredible contribution to our cultural history.  Anyway, among other things Wiesel and Ferris both focus on this fear of losing the lessons and values of history to our fast-paced, meaningless world.  They essentially see the same crisis that I'm having, except instead of my memories fading, they're more talking about memories and values and the human experience.  It's nice to see those kinds of parallels though.
  On a side note,  being a youth is becoming incredibly daunting.  It was very easy in high school to seem high-potential--oh, sure, he COULD do great things--but fulfilling that promise of potential is difficult.  Both of these highly respected people have placed the world's problems on our shoulders.  It's somewhat scary, but simultaneously empowering.  Let's go kick ass, our generation.

-Implicit in this argument for remembrance is this idea that our current lifestyle and many of its differences with the lifestyle of olde is somehow worse.  Like we're missing some key, intuitive piece of human experience that can't explicitly be mentioned, but its paucity can be felt.  I suppose I do feel that.  Is this a unique feeling, or have the keepers of the flame always said that of the newer lifestyle?
  It's similar, I think, to how a lot of the sentiment on campus regarding politics is that popular political debate is meaningless.  Their topics are all simply squabbling, and the real problems are ignored.  But what are those real problems?  I've been told them before, but they always seem to slip away from me.  What should our nation's priorities be?

Both of these questions have the vaguest possible answers.

Finally, I intend to chronicle how much money I spend on food this week.  I have unlimited and it constantly and increasingly feels like I'm wasting a ton of money.

I intend to keep examining different statistics of my lifestyle.  It's like Socrates said, "An unexamined life..."

DAMMIT I KNEW IT WOULD COME UP SOMEWHERE