Admittedly I'm a total lightweight, and the last time I got drunk it was off of like one or two glasses of something really foul tasting.
One of the reasons I stay up so late is because I hate all the preparations for sleep. Closing all the windows/doors, brushing my teeth, taking out my contacts, dragging out all my blankets, turning out the lights. So it's 3 AM and I'm staying up even though my shoulders are super, super sore.
Traumatizing event of the night - heard my neighbors having sex while walking Max, goddamnit. Max picks the worst possible lawns on which to poop, and my neighbors need to learn that while giant bushes block the sight of them in their backyard hot tub or whatever, they do not block sound. I'm not really opposed to sex, but I'm really, really not a voyeur-type person. I can't even watch porn without getting creeped out, although the fact that it was on my brother's computer probably aided with the creepout factor.
That was TMI for most people reading this I think. Man, people always say they learn about sex from their parents, but I learned it from a combination of Sweet Valley University books, a dictionary, and the Internet. Not really the best combination. It might not have been Sweet Valley though, it might have been Chocolate Wars, where I was way too young to get what was meant by calling someone a "fairy" and was so, so confused about why wings and magic were suddenly involved. (Which sort of implies that my first ever experience, even remotely, with sex was about rape, or almost-rape. What the fuck.)
I'm going to stop talking about sex now, since my brain is basically rambling although my fingers have retained enough coherence to make sure they keep spelling things properly. I don't know, the human language sounds particularly crude and ugly when you listen to it in a certain way, no matter the language, and, to paraphrase Pratchett, like nothing more than a system of telling one organism where the best food is.
I'm - sort of obviously - pro-fanfiction and fandom and all that, but there are times when I'm reading fic (and it's good fic, with the kind of writing that I wish I could match and surpass and with characterizations that are so insightful and painful I'm not even sure how to react), and I suppose this applies mainly to RPS, but something like, I don't know, Ryan Ross' father's death, and how much that must have hurt, and how totally awful and conflicting such an event must have been, and how that's being turned into fic fodder, and I can see where some of the anti-fandom sentiment comes from. But at the same time I know it's not meant to be hurtful or anything, that people wouldn't write about these people in fictional settings if they didn't have some kind of investment in them, and that they're not trying to trivialize whatever personal tragedies occur in the life of celebrities, but at the same time - it just sort of sucks. Maybe it's hypocritical but if I ever became someone who people would write fanfiction about, I'm not sure how well I'd deal with it.
I need to stop making LJ posts at 3 in the morning.
One last thing: I believe in God, because God and religion are not the same thing, and because everyone has to believe in something. I agree with my cousin in that everyone has a different version of God, and, taking that a little further, there can be no one true God because people can't believe in the same thing. But my cousin says that she tries not to judge people because that's God's job, but what else are people for? We judge, constantly and without thinking, and it's one thing to tolerate or accept differences but it's another to say that they don't matter. Of course they matter. What makes us human are our similarities, but what makes us people and not just bags of meat that have mastered the trick of self-delusion are our differences. The most anyone can try to do is not to let your judgments overly blind you, or something else that sounds just as pretentious.
And even if people don't believe in God or an afterlife or any kind of reward or punishment (which is almost nobody, I think, because deep down most people believe that if you do your best when you're alive, things will work out in the end), there's still a kind of afterlife. None of us live totally isolated, none of us can live without effecting change on the world and the people around us. If you don't believe in an afterlife, at least believe in that. To say that people who don't believe in God live without fear of consequence is ridiculous; the consequences are in our actions, are in the memories we leave behind. One of my cousins said that people who don't believe in God are immoral, not because of their lack of faith, but because they believe that they can act freely - which is such, such bullshit. I think I'm more afraid of being forgotten than being dead, but I'm trying to get past it, trying to move beyond it.
I don't understand the point of developing a relationship with God like Christians advocate, or trying to gain entrance into some paradise like most religions advise. We are alive for a reason. We are sentient for a reason. To believe otherwise would be despair; if we really are nothing more than just atoms, if the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts, then what's the point? We might as well lie on the floor and let the rats eat us, because we really don't have much of a purpose other than that. This will offend a lot of religious people, but we make our own kingdom of Heaven, we make our own paradises. The idea of a reward at the end (or beginning, because who knows?) of everything is meant to give hope, not to be the last goal. Every time someone prays, it feels like they're screaming to God, remember that I am alive, remember that I am not a speck in this world that has formed, remember that I am alive. The final frontier is the sky. Spending your life searching seems like a waste; the real trick is to create. If you believe in God, and that everything has a purpose, and that everything has a reason, then we are alive for a reason, we are on Earth for a reason, we have senses for a reason, we can think for a reason. Don't look for miracles unless there really is nothing else left.
And then people say that the purpose of humans is to create a relationship with God, to worship God, to tell God how awesome He is, but my God isn't a vain power-mad teenager (and my God also lacks gender).
I think the key difference is the difference between religion and spirituality. The first is mocked and the second sneered at, and they're treated the same, but they're really not the same thing at all. You can be both and you can be one or the other, and you don't have to be either.
In the morning I'm going to reread all this and want to cry at how long it's gotten and how utterly stupid my reasoning is.
One of the reasons I stay up so late is because I hate all the preparations for sleep. Closing all the windows/doors, brushing my teeth, taking out my contacts, dragging out all my blankets, turning out the lights. So it's 3 AM and I'm staying up even though my shoulders are super, super sore.
Traumatizing event of the night - heard my neighbors having sex while walking Max, goddamnit. Max picks the worst possible lawns on which to poop, and my neighbors need to learn that while giant bushes block the sight of them in their backyard hot tub or whatever, they do not block sound. I'm not really opposed to sex, but I'm really, really not a voyeur-type person. I can't even watch porn without getting creeped out, although the fact that it was on my brother's computer probably aided with the creepout factor.
That was TMI for most people reading this I think. Man, people always say they learn about sex from their parents, but I learned it from a combination of Sweet Valley University books, a dictionary, and the Internet. Not really the best combination. It might not have been Sweet Valley though, it might have been Chocolate Wars, where I was way too young to get what was meant by calling someone a "fairy" and was so, so confused about why wings and magic were suddenly involved. (Which sort of implies that my first ever experience, even remotely, with sex was about rape, or almost-rape. What the fuck.)
I'm going to stop talking about sex now, since my brain is basically rambling although my fingers have retained enough coherence to make sure they keep spelling things properly. I don't know, the human language sounds particularly crude and ugly when you listen to it in a certain way, no matter the language, and, to paraphrase Pratchett, like nothing more than a system of telling one organism where the best food is.
I'm - sort of obviously - pro-fanfiction and fandom and all that, but there are times when I'm reading fic (and it's good fic, with the kind of writing that I wish I could match and surpass and with characterizations that are so insightful and painful I'm not even sure how to react), and I suppose this applies mainly to RPS, but something like, I don't know, Ryan Ross' father's death, and how much that must have hurt, and how totally awful and conflicting such an event must have been, and how that's being turned into fic fodder, and I can see where some of the anti-fandom sentiment comes from. But at the same time I know it's not meant to be hurtful or anything, that people wouldn't write about these people in fictional settings if they didn't have some kind of investment in them, and that they're not trying to trivialize whatever personal tragedies occur in the life of celebrities, but at the same time - it just sort of sucks. Maybe it's hypocritical but if I ever became someone who people would write fanfiction about, I'm not sure how well I'd deal with it.
I need to stop making LJ posts at 3 in the morning.
One last thing: I believe in God, because God and religion are not the same thing, and because everyone has to believe in something. I agree with my cousin in that everyone has a different version of God, and, taking that a little further, there can be no one true God because people can't believe in the same thing. But my cousin says that she tries not to judge people because that's God's job, but what else are people for? We judge, constantly and without thinking, and it's one thing to tolerate or accept differences but it's another to say that they don't matter. Of course they matter. What makes us human are our similarities, but what makes us people and not just bags of meat that have mastered the trick of self-delusion are our differences. The most anyone can try to do is not to let your judgments overly blind you, or something else that sounds just as pretentious.
And even if people don't believe in God or an afterlife or any kind of reward or punishment (which is almost nobody, I think, because deep down most people believe that if you do your best when you're alive, things will work out in the end), there's still a kind of afterlife. None of us live totally isolated, none of us can live without effecting change on the world and the people around us. If you don't believe in an afterlife, at least believe in that. To say that people who don't believe in God live without fear of consequence is ridiculous; the consequences are in our actions, are in the memories we leave behind. One of my cousins said that people who don't believe in God are immoral, not because of their lack of faith, but because they believe that they can act freely - which is such, such bullshit. I think I'm more afraid of being forgotten than being dead, but I'm trying to get past it, trying to move beyond it.
I don't understand the point of developing a relationship with God like Christians advocate, or trying to gain entrance into some paradise like most religions advise. We are alive for a reason. We are sentient for a reason. To believe otherwise would be despair; if we really are nothing more than just atoms, if the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts, then what's the point? We might as well lie on the floor and let the rats eat us, because we really don't have much of a purpose other than that. This will offend a lot of religious people, but we make our own kingdom of Heaven, we make our own paradises. The idea of a reward at the end (or beginning, because who knows?) of everything is meant to give hope, not to be the last goal. Every time someone prays, it feels like they're screaming to God, remember that I am alive, remember that I am not a speck in this world that has formed, remember that I am alive. The final frontier is the sky. Spending your life searching seems like a waste; the real trick is to create. If you believe in God, and that everything has a purpose, and that everything has a reason, then we are alive for a reason, we are on Earth for a reason, we have senses for a reason, we can think for a reason. Don't look for miracles unless there really is nothing else left.
And then people say that the purpose of humans is to create a relationship with God, to worship God, to tell God how awesome He is, but my God isn't a vain power-mad teenager (and my God also lacks gender).
I think the key difference is the difference between religion and spirituality. The first is mocked and the second sneered at, and they're treated the same, but they're really not the same thing at all. You can be both and you can be one or the other, and you don't have to be either.
In the morning I'm going to reread all this and want to cry at how long it's gotten and how utterly stupid my reasoning is.
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