Who Wants to Live on Mars?

Don’t everyone raise their hands at once.

The founders of Virgin and Google are planning to found the first human colony on Mars in the year 2014. Here is the website. It even has a questionnaire you can fill out to apply to be a Virgle Pioneer (kinda like the Western Expansion, only this time you’re strapping yourself to essentially a bomb and hoping for the best instead of fording the river in your wagon).

In the founders defense, the colony is not expected to truly flourish for the first hundred years. This reminds of a science fiction novel in which the colony sounds Utopian in theory, but goes horribly wrong. Who knows, maybe it will work. Or maybe this is a huge practical joke (not fair to the people who have already packed their bags and started training for weightlessness).

I am interested to see if this will really work. Maybe Mars is a good alternative to Earth, especially since we’re crapping it up so much. Personally, I will watch all the action from Earth. As long as there is oxygen in the atmosphere and trees in the ground; my feet will stay planted firmly on the planet in which I was born.

Who Will Tell the People? Great Editorial

This is a great editorial written by Thomas L. Friedman.

It talks about how we need a president who has the courage to tell Americans the truth. Americans need to be told the truth about the state of the economy and realize the reality of the world that we are living in. The author argues that our country can be great once more if we are willing to put in the work to revitalizing our country. And it seems like there is no shortage of young people who are ready make a real different in the world. Maybe this is why Obama is so popular with the 18-25 age group: his message of change and hope and making a difference in the world is the very mindset every 18-25 year old has. Maybe this generation will be the generation to step up and improve the world around us, they certainly have the drive to do so. Just look at the numbers of graduates joining or founding non for-profits, joining Teach for America or the Peace Corp or simply showing up at the polls.

Is Obama the best candidate for the Presidency? It is too early to know. One thing is certain, however, Americans need to take a message of change to heart and start working to make our great country an even better place. If we don’t do it, who will? It is, after all, our country.

A Confession

Here we are. At the two year expiration date. Did you know that I have never had what I thought was a close friendship last more than two years? They always got fed up with me and decided to phase me out of their life. I was the cancer than they needed to cut away. Me? I was cancerous? I have been spending my entire life trying to figure out what is wrong with me. Why doesn’t anyone want to remain friends with me? Am I that unbearable? I keep telling myself that I am not, but it seems to be a pattern in my life. Obviously, I am doing something wrong. It could be that I am an intense friend and most people hate that. But all I have ever wanted is a friend and would do anything to have and keep one. Literally ANYTHING. I just want someone to talk to, have fun with, someone who understands me and most importantly: actually wants to be around me. Being the only friend I know how to be, though, drives most prospective friends away. What a pathetic irony. I don’t want to tell anyone this because I think it makes me sound pathetic.

This is why I cannot figure out why you even take the time to care. But you do. You care enough to deal with all of my capricious emotions and insecurities. I don’t think you understand them completely, and I think they piss you off a lot and yet you still care. Why? I’m not worth it. I am a huge insecure, pain in the ass and YOU’RE STILL MY FRIEND. Even when we have the same fight over and over again: you still listen. Even when we have the most pointless conversation that goes absolutely no where: you still participate. No matter how much all my shit pisses you off, you still do this stuff because I need it. This is why I am so confused all the time. Not a single friend in the past would have ever done this for me. Not a single one. So, the reason I ask about the “state of our friendship” is because I am so damn confused as to why YOU take the time with ME, when no one else has ever bothered. And the reason why I am so intense to you sometimes: because somewhere in the back of my mind (the part that gets clouded with irrational emotions) I am so afraid that I am going to somehow screw up the only real friendship I’ve ever had. I cannot tell you how much thankful I am for you. You are the only person who ever took the time to see through my outside shell to me.

I have never once told you that this is what you mean to me. Though, knowing you, you probably already knew that somewhere deep down and I never really needed to tell you. But I am going to anyways: Thank you. You are and forever will be MY BEST FRIEND.

P.S. I don’t believe in two year expiration dates anymore.

Nightclub….or Church

This is the most viewed video* on youtube for this week. Apparently, Playtex has a new ad campaign. Its actually pretty funny

*it won’t post into the actual blog itself*

And We Do Nothing

Myanmar Cyclone: 128,000 Dead and Counting; 2.5 million severely affected (and the government is stealing the relief food)

Chinese Earth Quake: Official Death Toll is at 19,500; 10 million directly affected

Attack in Jaipur, India: 63 Dead, 100 wounded

Khar, Pakistan: Over a dozen dead

What is wrong with the world today? Maybe the real question is: what’s wrong with us for not doing something to help? We are all guilty of seeing these terrible tragedies on the news, think to ourselves how horrible it is for those people to suffer and then we go back to our dinner without giving them a further thought. Its easy to talk about how horrible these things are; its a lot more difficult to actually do something to help. The question is: will you?

A Response (Untitled)

How do you know when you’re dead?

Does anyone really know?

Is it any different than living?

Better yet, how do you know that you’re alive?

Here’s my hand, I’ll show you.

Mommy’s here, baby.

Let me warm the silence

Huddle near my voice.

Breathe out, Breathe in

Three, two, one

I’m coming

Digging with my soul

Into your tunnel of despair

I will try to bring you light

Show you the end of the tunnel

I have rolled the rock away

Rise again once more.

Happy Ending

I’m that girl who still believes in the happy ending at the end of the fairy tale. Maybe it’s foolish, but I don’t care. I think it leaves a little open to the imagination. Sure, maybe Disney magic is unrealistic and unnecessarily sappy but it sure is nice to think that everything works out in the end. And you know what? It seems to me, that it pretty much does. Hope can come out of tragedy and a lot of laugher and wisdom can come out of foolish mistakes.

Trust me. I know.

Looks like I’m about Ten Years Behind

This article is about a 10 year college sophomore who knows more about quantum mechanics than most people on the planet. I guess being a 20 year old college junior doesn’t cut it anymore. Good for him, though. I’d be interested to see where he ends up at my age.

Just a Short Story Rattling in My Journal

“Today, it seems as though the world is falling apart. A part of my has shriveling and died, blown away like dust in the wind. My soul is bound and broken on the floor and I cannot muster the strength to pick the shattered pieces and tape them back together. Oh, how I wish to be free of these shackles of torment. Nothing can save me now. These will be the last words that I will ever write.”

James stared at his computer, counting the blinks of his cursor. It was mocking him, calling him a coward. He would never go through with it. In fact, on the one hundredth blink, James would hold down the backspace button, until ever single last letter of his pathetic misery was erased. He would then slurp down the cold remains of his watery coffee, kiss his wife goodbye and head off the yet another day of work; whistling through the entire ritual. He was a coward.

Whisk Me Away to Never Never Land

Go on! Go back and grow up! But I’m warnin’ ya: once you’re grown up, you can never come back. Never!

Peter Pan (1953 Film)

To be frank, this growing up thing sucks. I wish it would stop.