The Euphoria Pill

Writing letters heals wounds like no other vice can.

› "A speech I once gave: On Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton"

C.S. Lewis was the first person to make me want to be a writer. He made me aware of the writer, that there was someone standing behind the words, that there was someone telling the story. I fell in love with the way he used parentheses — the auctorial asides that were both wise and chatty, and I rejoiced in using such brackets in my own essays and compositions through the rest of my childhood.
I think, perhaps, the genius of Lewis was that he made a world that was more real to me than the one I lived in; and if authors got to write the tales of Narnia, then I wanted to be an author.

-Neil Gaiman

Today was a good day for snow.

Which also led me to do nothing for exams week.

Despite the procrastination, it was a glorious day.

(All photos are from Acha.)

Everybody who wanted to be a writer and didn’t become one failed based on one of two critical reasons: one, they were lazy, or two, they were afraid. Let’s take for granted you’re not lazy. That means you’re afraid. Fear is nonsense. What do you think is going to happen? You’re going to be eaten by tigers? Life will afford you lots of reasons to be afraid: bees, kidnappers, terrorism, being chewed apart by an escalator, Republicans, Snooki. But being a writer is nothing worthy of fear. It’s worthy of praise. And triumph. And fireworks. And shotguns. And a box of wine. So shove fear aside — let fear be gnawed upon by escalators and tigers. Step up to the plate. Let this be your year. 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now) by Chuck Wendig (via ilovekashilario)

(via iamactuallynikki)

Stuff I discussed with Professor P.

Decided to meet up with two professors today but the first professor was quite busy so we had it rescheduled to next week. Next professor I met up with was Prof. P who has been my professor in several classes ever since I was in my first semester. He’s my favorite because he does not teach in the regular manner. He tends to discuss things, show movies or clips and assign readings. His in-class discussions are really worthwhile and life-changing, I believe.

I’m getting carried away.

So I was talking with Professor P just to pick his brain on doing NGO work after college and here were some important points that he brought up that I should carefully consider before embarking on any plan for any NGO work.

1. Self-sustainability - Make sure that you have enough money to go on for several weeks, months, or for however long you plan to do your NGO work because NGO work is mostly voluntary. Do not go there without prior knowledge of how to take care of yourself (ex. cleaning) and don’t expect the place to be a paradise where the NGO needs to take care of you.  You should not be a burden, you should be a help.

2. Skills - Know what kind of skills you have that you can offer them. Whether its fixing stuff, knitting, speaking other languages, teaching, writing, clerical work, computer programming, cooking, cleaning, ANYTHING.

3. Navigating the Social Terrain - Taking your family and peers into account is very important in considering what you want to do. Many people might not agree with what you want to do and some people might look down at you for choosing this path. Taking your family’s needs into account is included as well. You have to know how well the people around you will respond and how you will respond to them also.

4. People you want to work with - Know the people that you want to work with. Although it is quite difficult to know whether the organization is harmonious or not, it is still important to have some general idea of who you would like to work with and work for in order to be able to communicate better.

4. Introspection- Before doing any of these things, make sure that you have searched deep within you for what makes you happy, what gives you joy. As long as you have that, then you can go a long way.

It is impossible to love and be wise. Francis Bacon in his book “On Love”

Bear Warrior by Ruben Ireland How I feel sometimes. In other times, what I wish I was.

Bear Warrior

by Ruben Ireland

How I feel sometimes. In other times, what I wish I was.

♦ 1 week ago

anotsaint:

I Am Not a Hipster (2012) trailer

dwiputribayu, I’m starting to believe that 3/4 of “it” (whatever “it” is) comprises of that kind of hair.

(Source: thefilmfatale)

There’s a black-brown kite that flies around the river near my house. It looks like a glorious thing when it’s gliding gracefully during the early mornings. I hope to get a good shot of it sometime.

There’s a black-brown kite that flies around the river near my house. It looks like a glorious thing when it’s gliding gracefully during the early mornings. I hope to get a good shot of it sometime.

(Source: chromalight)

♦ 1 week ago

Why did the chicken cross the road?

  • Plato: For the greater good.
  • Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
  • Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
  • Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
  • Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
  • Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
  • Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
  • Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
  • Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
  • Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
  • B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
  • Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
  • Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
  • Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
  • Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
  • Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
  • Salvador Dali: The Fish.
  • Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
  • Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
  • Epicurus: For fun.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
  • Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
  • Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
  • Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
  • David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
  • Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.
  • Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
  • Ronald Reagan: I forget.
  • John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
  • The Sphinx: You tell me.
  • Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
  • Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
  • Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
  • Molly Yard: It was a hen!
  • Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
  • Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
  • Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
  • The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.
  • Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.
  • Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
  • Othello: Jealousy.
  • Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
  • Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.
  • Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
  • Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
  • Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
  • Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
  • Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.
  • Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
  • Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
  • Hamlet: That is not the question.
  • Donne: It crosseth for thee.
  • Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
  • Constable: To get a better view.
  • Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.
  • Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.
  • Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.