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Memores acti prudentes futuri


You're unsure if I am a loose end or a strand
that waits for you to mend or understand
A few words
"When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness."
~ D.H. Lawrence

"Is the meaning of life defined by its duration? Or does life have a purpose so large that it doesn't have to be prolonged at any cost to preserve its meaning?"

"Living is not good, but living well. The wise man, therefore, lives as well as he should, not as long as he can... He will always think of life in terms of quality not quantity... Dying early or late is of no relevance, dying well or ill is... even if it is true that while there is life there is hope, life is not to be bought at any cost."
~ Seneca

"People will tell you nothing matters, the whole world's about to end soon anyway. Those people are looking at life the wrong way. I mean, things don't need to last forever to be perfect."
~ Daydream Nation

"All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories-- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death."
~ The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes

"The road now stretched across open country, and it occurred to me - not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience - that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong site of the road."
~ Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
~ William Blake
TICoSME
Musicalities!
Online Radio
Soma.fm

More Fun Shtuff
Newgrounds Audio Portal
Pandora
SoundClick
Kill that boredom!
Binder Paper Comics

Web Comics and Such
A Distant Soil (Some nudity)
The Adventures of Gyno-Star (Some explicit stuff)
Aquapunk
Axe Cop
Basic Instructions
Bear Nuts
Beeserker

Blue Milk Special
Bug
Buttersafe
ChannelATE
Cigarro & Cerveja
Crunchy Bunches

Curia Regis
Cyanide and Happiness
dead winter (has some explicit stuff)
Devilbear: The Grimoires of Bearalzebub (PG-13?)
Diesel Sweeties
DUBBLEBABY
Eat That Toast!
E-merl.com
The End
Evil Diva
Evil Inc.
Existential Comics
The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon
For Lack of a Better Comic
Forming (Explicit)

Girls with Slingshots (some explicit stuff...?)
Mirror
The Last Halloween
Last Train to Old Town
L.A.W.L.S.
The League of Evil Genius

Legend of Bill
Living With Insanity (some nudity)
Love Me Nice
Married to the Sea
Meaty Yogurt
Medium Large
The Meek
Metacarpolis
Monsterhood
Monsterkind
The Moon Prince
Moth (Some nudity)
Mr. Lovenstein
Muddlers Beat

Natalie Dee
Nedroid
The Non-Adventures of Wonderella
Optipess
Out There
Owen's Uncles
Phuzzy Comics
Political Cartoonists Index
Poorly Drawn Lines
Powernap
The Property of Hate
Red Meat
Rice Boy
Robbie and Bobby
Rosscott, Inc.
Safely Endangered
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Savage Chickens
Scary Go Round
Scenes from a Multiverse
The Secret Knots
Serenity Rose
Stand Still. Stay Silent
Stinking Hellebore
Strong Female Protagonist
Subnormality
Tales of Pylea
Three Word Phrase (some nudity)
Tiny Kitten Teeth
Toothpaste for Dinner
Trying Human (Some nudity)
Two Guys and Guy

Wilde Life
Witchy
xkcd
Yellow Peril (PG-13)

Infrequently/No Longer Updating Web Comics
The Abominable Charles Christopher
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
The Adventures of Ellie Connelly
American Hell
Bag of Toast
Bear in Mind
Bobwhite
The Book of Biff
Brat-halla
Brightest
Broodhollow
Bullfinch
Camp Weedonwantcha
Chain Bear (Some explicit stuff)
Chainsawsuit
Conspiracy Friends!
Daisy is Dead
Distillum
Dream Life
Dumm Comics
Ectopiary (Some nudity)
Edemia
Edmund Finney's Quest to Find the Meaning of Life
A Fine Example
Finn and Charlie are HITCHED
Floodmud
Freaks!

Green Wake
Gun Show
Hark! A Vagrant
Head Doctor Productions
Hello with Cheese
Helpful Figures
Hollow Mountain
IDK Comics
Inscribing Ardi
Intragalactic
The Intrepid Girlbot
JBabb Comics
Kyle & Atticus
Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space
Letters to a Wild Boar
Lovecraft is Missing

Manta-man
Meat and Plastic
Minimalism Sucks
Mis-
Moe
Moon Town
The Nerds of Paradise
Nimona
No Reason Comics
Odd-Fish
One Swoop Fell
Patches
Pictures for Sad Children
Raymondo Person
A Redtail's Dream
Riotfish
Roy's Boys (PG 13?)
Run Freak Run
Saint's Way
Shortpacked!
Sin Titulo
Snowflakes
Split Lip
Spooky Doofus
SubCulture
Super Buzzkill
The Super Fogeys
The Super Gay Adventures of Ross Boston
Thermohalia
Troubletown
Mirror
Ugly Girl
YU + ME
2815 Monument

Pure Flash Awesomeness
Aardvardkbutter.com
Angry Alien
Die Anstalt : Toy Psychiatry
The Frown
Hoogerbrugge

Other
Bogleech
Clients from Hell
Brian Despain
Creatures in My Head
Damn You Auto Correct!
Jhonen Vasquez's site
Overheard in New York
Passive Aggressive Notes
Submarinechannel.com
Superdickery
UHpinions
Whirled
Different times, different standards [4P]
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
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Ad nauseam [4P]
Monday, March 20, 2017
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A little bit about motivation
Sunday, March 19, 2017
I was looking through Brain Pickings today and ended up on this page:

Mary Oliver on the Measure of a Life Well Lived and How to Maximize Our Aliveness

Just thinking about this excerpt from the poem posted there:
You could live a hundred years, it�s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

In a sense, darkness does help me get going. While I primarily move towards self-improvement, that was spurred by initial feelings of deficiency. Remembering the worst times in my life inspires me to cherish the good times I have and maintain my life enough to avoid anything like the worst times again. If I let the darkness of my life fade, I don't think I'd have as much motivation to live fully.

---

I saw Get Out with Esther today at the theatre. It was pretty good, but we both wondered about a certain plot point and never resolved the issue we had with it. I was glad for the conversation we had, although I was pretty sleep-deprived since the movie was a bit before 11 AM and I didn't even come home until like 3:30 AM. We talked about racial politics and financial investments and relationships and how it feels when people objectify you with their pity. Later in the day she came to my house for dinner, and we made spaghetti and kofta together, then I showed her my ex keepsakes and some pictures of two of the things I've loved most in my life. There was some sadness involved in knowing that I'll never have those things again, but it was bearable. Still, I can't help but wonder if I'll ever smile again like I did back then.

I have hopes that the hard times won't last forever, but I have an unwavering uncertainty that good times will come back. I don't mean that I think I'll never be happy again, but I always wonder if my most realistic option is a life of minimized pain, rather than maximized happiness. It often feels like I have so much more to lose than I have to gain, and I feel very risk-averse as a result. How much of my life is structured around this idea?

It's almost 3 AM now, and I know staying up this late isn't a great idea, but this time of night always makes me really contemplative, and then I just want to write or mull over my thoughts and memories.

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Thinking better
Thursday, March 16, 2017
I remember when I was 18 and I was just soaking up this stuff like a sponge:

"Critical Thinking" from QualiaSoup.


In retrospect, I feel very lucky that I got into the stuff I did at that age. Things could have turned out a lot differently, and I could have developed in ways I'd consider less positive. That's not to say I haven't messed up in various ways, and I've certainly made a lot of mistakes, but I feel like I started off on a good path. Could've done much worse than getting into rationality and starting to think more critically about the world and myself. Reconsidering my own beliefs and thought processes was pretty key to trying to understand other people (and myself) better, and if I'd never questioned things, I think I'd be... well... less receptive to learning than I am now.

It also helps that I was close to people who challenged me and my worldviews. Kyle figured into that first, and then Max. And my fourth ex certainly challenged me a lot, though it wasn't always in ways I'd consider particularly nice. Still, even if they were hard criticisms to take, I do feel like I grew from them. Trying to be a more reasonable person takes a lot of admitting that you're wrong about things and seeking a more informed perspective, but I'm doing better with that than I used to...

Was thinking about writing a letter which I may or may not eventually send, but I definitely don't feel ready to send something like that yet, despite how long it's been. It would just be an explication of my changing understandings and interpretations of things, and I don't know that the recipient would really appreciate it or care.

---

Working with my group for school this past quarter has been probably the worst group experience of my academic career as an adult. I spent most of my afternoon feeling enraged at one of my group members for doing a terrible job of her part-- she wrote it in unintelligible run-on sentences with hideous formatting with bizarre random capitalization-- and having to hold back from just losing it and lashing out at her as she texted me dozens of times and emailed me repeatedly about edits to the paper. I feel better now, at least, but ugh, dealing with this level of incompetence and stupidity was making me just unreasonably angry.

I went out and ranted to my dad about this girl and he told me a story about an extremely incompetent guy he had to work with once, who was just mind-bogglingly bad at following directions. I feel like my dad is really funny, but it's hard to translate his humor into words because it relies so much on gestures and expressions/tone of voice. He likes to make videos of himself building projects, but I don't think we have a lot of videos of him just... talking and joking around. He makes the rest of my family laugh, though.

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The window is closing [4P]
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
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Silently conversing with myself
Monday, March 13, 2017
Me: I wish I could Photoshop away my blemishes in real life.
Me: Isn't that just using makeup?
Me: Oh wait yeah I guess so.
Me: Eh that seems like a lot of effort.

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Reflecting on relational trends [4P]
Sunday, March 12, 2017
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My mind is wandering
Friday, March 10, 2017
"Hey" by The Blow.

I can see that now
I did this to myself
Your hair blew around
It was trying to tell me something

From its privileged position so close to your brain
It could see all the things that you couldn't explain
It warned me your smile might get carried away
Starting games that your heart didn't know how to play

You leaned over me and the V of your cleavage whispered
"I believe that you can see you won't get what you want from me
"You won't get what you want from me
Hey, could this not be what you want?
I believe that you can see you won't get what you want from me
You won't get what you want from me
Hey, could this not be what you want for me?"

I can see that now
I did this to myself
I threw my love around
I barely noticed if you returned it
And as I leaned ever closer you leaned more away
All that you wouldn't give I thought I could just take
I said, "Baby please show me everything"
"All the parts I don't like I'm just not gonna see"

"I believe that you can see you won't get what you want from me
"You won't get what you want from me
Hey, could this not be what you want?
I believe that you can see you won't get what you want from me
You won't get what you want from me
Hey, could this not be what you want for me?"


I think it's a good thing that I didn't discover this song earlier than I did, or it might have been unbearable to listen to. Now there's just a distant twisting sharpness to it.

Today I'm thankful for the Wayback Machine. In 2010 I found a lot of things that impacted me in ways I don't know if I'll ever forget, and this was one of them:

Only the Lonely

I was looking for something else, and I found this performance artist's site full of grotesque masochistic projects. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and I was appalled, disturbed, and fascinated. I couldn't understand or relate to it at all, but the strangeness of it took me out of myself and gave me something of a break from my own troubles at the time. I looked at this specific performance page a number of times, because for one it was one of the more tame performances, and also because there was something weirdly comforting about the song to me at the time. I'm not into art that seems like its primary goal is to shock, but I felt like this project has... a lot of meanings to be unraveled. It's shocking, but that's not its central purpose, that's more of a side effect of it. This seems like the kind of thing I would like discussing with someone who could approach it in a curious and nonjudgemental manner. I wonder if I could talk about that with A.? We're getting ice cream tomorrow, so I guess I could tell him about it.

On Reddit I found a social skills subreddit and from my brief glance around, I gathered that one of the common things people ask for help with is not being boring. I don't really know what it is like to be perceived as a boring person; perhaps erroneously, I've always assumed that boringness stems from holding back things that you might say, in which case you just need to be less inhibited, or having poor theory of mind and not understanding the level of detail that is appropriate to tell other people or how other people perceive what you're saying. I wonder if there's any research on the phenomenon of being boring? Just-- what is it, why does it happen, and so on. Maybe something to look into at another time.

Time keeps slipping away from me somehow, I feel like I blink and it's two, three hours later than I expected. :S I need to go to bed...

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