Dogs as percussion instruments
Relaxing Saturday was mostly that. I got about 10 hours of sleep and I don't think I even got dressed until noon. I watched Katie play some Dead Rising 2. Looks about as good as the first Dead Rising! Which I hated.
We left the house initially to go to Gamexchange so I could dig around in their PS2 and Xbox games. We got out to west end and it was busy as well. I guess everyone being cooped up all week from the snow finally had to go somewhere. Gamexchange was closed! Forever! It was so disappointing.
So we went to the Gamestop nearby. Katie found Singstar 80's and didn't get it. We walked down to Disc Replay. Neither of us had been in there before. They had a lot of games and the prices were competitive but the selection was mostly super common stuff or crap. Then we walked to TJ Maxx, which was packed full of people.
I don't do well with a lot of people, especially in cramped quarters with everyone moving around.
Katie drags me around the store for a while then we leave and walk back to the car and then we go to Barnes & Noble and Petsmart before I fucking lose it and we have to go home.
I told Katie yesterday that I was going to dig around in the crawlspace and look at my games, so that's what I did this afternoon. It took a lot of digging but I found them! I pulled out my Silent Hills and some other PS2 games. I pulled out 50 Cent: Bulletproof but it's apparently not backwards compatible with the 360 and I don't quite know where my xbox is.
Tonight we ate at Thailand Cuisine then we walked around the mall for a little while. Nearly everyone else in the mall was a pre-teen kid or teenage parents. It was kind of bizarre. I saw a couple of little girls there pushing strollers with dolls in them. IN THE MALL.
Then we went to Chris's house and hung out with him. They punished me by watching Big Bang Theory, which is still awful.
It's only 11:30 and I'm already tired. Totally not looking forward to tomorrow! At all!
Census
Today a census dude showed up at my apartment. This is strange because my roommates and I all filled out our census and I put it in the mail myself, but apparently no one else in our building did because this guy was tasked with canvassing the whole building.
Brad answered the door so he got to go first. The guy was asking him the basic questions, and then he asked Brad what race he was. Brad kind of gave him an incredulous look and said "white", which is quite obvious if you look at him, but I know he has to ask this question every single time because he doesn't actually know Brad and he could have answered in any number of ways.
So he gets to me and asks me my race and I answer "human". He kind of chuckled and said he had to write it down because that's what I answered. I didn't make any effort to correct my answer.
I almost felt guilty for giving this guy an answer he clearly wasn't looking for, but I think in the grand scheme of things I'd rather be marked down as "human" than "white".
Doing Nothing
I'm on day four of a four day weekend. For the last three days I've done absolutely nothing. Nothing. I've wasted all three days. I feel pretty miserable about it but I'm having a hard time coming up with ways I could've spent my time better.
I can't say I did absolutely nothing. I played some Freelancer. I played some Starlancer on my dreamcast. I watched a half hour of Southland Tales before I had to turn it off. I kind of cleaned up my office in an attempt to find a phantom smell. I kind of organized my closet when I was looking for the video cable to my dreamcast. The sum of all this, though, is basically zero.
I've got two more four day weekends coming up. Hopefully they'll be better spent. This one was basically a waste.
I’m not really Zen Buddhist.
Religion is hard. I went to a Lutheran grade school but I knew even then I wasn't Christian. I can't believe in a world where an intelligent god and anti-god are constantly vying for my attention and depending on my actions will determine whether I spend an eternity in a heaven or hell. I know that's oversimplifying things (I know a lot about Christianity, I spent 8 years in Lutheran schools!) but that's just one of my big beefs. I don't believe in any intelligent deity which strikes out most religions. In trying to see if any religion fit, Buddhism seemed to fit best but now I don't think it really fits either.
Buddhism is almost as fractured and diverse as Christianity. I don't believe in mysticism so that eliminated a lot of Buddhist schools. From what I could tell this left Zen. I've read a lot about Zen. Zen fits a lot. In fact I'm a pretty Zen person, I can take a lot of emotional and mental punishment before I start to crack. There's not a lot of people who can handle bad news or anger like I can.
My problem with Zen is practice. I can't sit my way to enlightenment. Sitting is supposed to be a period of inflection and inward looking and where you can relax and sort out the mind's problems. My problem is that I can't sit and do nothing. It feels like I'm wasting time, like I could be inflecting and sorting out my problems while I work. I don't feel like sitting and expanding my mind is getting me any closer to peace of mind.
That's all I want, really. I don't need the mysteries of the universe explained to me. I don't need some supreme deity pointing out what's right and wrong, I can figure that out myself. I don't need to be threatened with damnation to be a good person. I don't need karma balancing out the good and the bad, it'll never equal out.
I believe in actions. My own actions. The world is full of people trying to point the finger and blame someone else. I'm trying to reduce my own amount of blame. And I'll work my way to enlightenment. Or maybe I'll play video games to enlightenment. And I'll suffer my way to enlightenment. I firmly believe there's a price to be paid for every thing you do and I won't skimp on the bill by pointing the finger and I won't try to drown my problems in alcohol or drugs. I'll suffer through every agonizing second of this existence and if it gets me nowhere, oh well. I'll still be dead and nothing's changing that. Everyone dies.