Anarchy, Life a Joke?, and Thora Birch

I talked with my dad about politics tonight after dinner. It was the first conversation we've had where we didn't fight since January. I didn't say it, but I finally realized that I'm basically an anarchist or at the most a socialist when it comes to State authority. I think the institution of the State is a joke. What pretended authority could it have? I actually think Monarchies have a better claim to sovereignty than Democracies. If I could find a Catholic Monarchy I'd be set.

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At work today my co-worker who is an Atheist said that his girlfriend always gets angry at him because he laughs about serious things. He said 'I laugh because life is a joke. You're born, you do what society tells you to do, and you die.' While I disagree with the philosophy I found it very honest. It reminds me of American Beauty, and the Comedian from Watchmen.

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Tonight I watched a bit of American Beauty. What a fantastic film. I have many favourite parts, but one of them is the conversation between Jane (Thora Birch) and Angela (Mena Suvari):

Angela Hayes: Jane, he's a freak!
Jane Burnham: Then so am I! And we'll always be freaks and we'll never be like other people and you'll never be a freak because you're just too... perfect!



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Out of interest I went to see what Thora Birch is up to these days, the news part of her website was last updated in 2005...4 years ago.

She has a discussion board to talk about herself. The most recent comments are viagra ads someone has spammed, followed by 2 people talking about the last time they had a new picture of her. It's pretty creepy.

But I successfully found people more lonely and pathetic than I am. I wonder if Thora Birch ever checks her website and finds these few pathetic fans hanging on, I wonder what she'd think of them.

She's an interesting character too, from a German Jewish family, named after Thor, the Norse god. And her parents were 'adult film stars'.

I bet she'd be an interesting person to have a heart-to-heart with.

I found out that 'heart-to-heart' comes from the Confessions of St. Augustine. The Latin is "cor ad (cor) loquotor"... I think?

Names

I've been thinking about names recently and what it means to be 'branded' with one. I tried to Latinize mine. Andrus Petrus Cottrillus in the nominative (I made Andrew ; Andru so that it was a 4th declension noun, there's now 'ew' ending nouns in Latin).

I was looking up names I saw in the Twilight Saga, and found the meaning of some like "Esme" being the old French for "To love". When William the Conqueror came from Normandy and destroyed the Anglo-Saxons and English was codified as a language, many concepts indescribably in Anglish/English just simply adopted Old French words and placed them in the language (because the Normans spoke Old French). I found this interesting as my decendents were Norman serfs brought over to England with King Bill the first there.

Celeste (heavenly) & Rosabelle (beautiful rose)are good Latin names I like.

A Cold Walk, Twilight/New Moon, Wikihow, and Unfinished Homework

I was home alone tonight and I sat down to watch Top Gear with some Butterscotch ice cream. When I looked down at myself. I was feeling particularly obese, so I threw my ice cream out...all of it. I went through the act in my mind to evaluate it ethically. It was objectively a bad action (wasting food) but the motive (moderation) was good and the situation was good (I'm already morbidly obese). So I figured it was ok to do.

I've been reading Twilight and now am half way through New Moon. This officially makes me gay, I know, but I think it's just because the books are about love and beautiful girls and stuff, and I'm desperately lonely (in the words of SNL jeopardy's Martha Stewart). But they've been making me think I really need to find a girlfriend again. It's been a year and 2 months since I last kissed a girl and that's far too long.

In my sudden bout of self-hatred I did 2 stupid things. I went to my bathroom to try to throw up (I could never be bulimic if I don't even have the willpower to diet don't worry). And then I decided that instead I should try and exercise (so that I could get a Bella of my own). I put on my rosary, and went for a walk in the freezing cold. I prayed a pseudo-St. Michael Chaplet "O God make Speed to Save me, O Lord Make Haste To Help Me, Glory be...etc." x ? , as well as some of my usual painfully honest and blunt prayers which contain far too much Anglo-Saxon.

I finally got home and my legs were tingling from the friction and yet freezing from the weather. I read some more New Moon - a terribly depressing book , which isn't helping my recently returned Depression.

So then for some reason I looked and saw that I had twice as much Latin homework as I had thought. So I just decided to put it off, and looked on WikiHow for how to find a girlfriend.

One thing I think was hillarious, they kept saying "be confident" and "be yourself". What if your personality is self-deprecating and unconfident. Eh?! riddle me that !

Anyway, I think it was a waste of time as I already know how to talk to girls, and I think I'm pretty charismatic, it's just that if I was about 100 pounds lighter, wasn't Catholic / dogmatic, and cared about meaningless pop-culture stuff, i'd be fine. But I am all those things, so it doesn't seem like anythings going to happen for a while. I should probably get up and do my Latin.

Oh but 4 good things happened (so that it's not all depressing)..

1. I had an amazing talk with my philosophy prof about St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotelian Metaphysics, and Post-Modernism (the fact that those things excite me are a perfect example of my aforementioned unpopular interests).

2. I openly disagreed with a girl on Religion in the American Revolution and argued it was a Presbyterian revolt against the CofE and she actually said she respected my opinion and was glad I challenged her. A kindred spirit! (I bet she has a boyfriend).

3. I got to have lunch with my best friend today.

4. I got to have a good meeting with the Roman Catholic asst. chaplain and we discussed the faith and what I was learning from the Newman Club, and he treated me like a person/end rather than means to something.

Well. Another week chasing Eudaimonia via women, weightloss, and wishy-washy teen literature, as well as western philosophy

Swine Flu and Latin Loneliness

I wrote out a journal of random thoughts I've had over the last few days, perhaps I'll post it one day, but since it involves alot of personal names of people I won't put it up, but sum up the geist / spirit of what I wrote using 3 events/themes. And I promise: I've deleted all the Theology stuff.

I was in Latin today and my nazi prof was being her typical power-tripping self and catching kids unaware who didn't do their homework. I get really lonely alot, and sometimes irrationally fearful at Brock, and so I always "fantasize" (if that's the right word and doesn't carry too much sexual association) about girls sitting next to me in class. Well a girl sat next to me today and we were actually really close together. She was sneezing the whole time and coughing into her jacket, and as it turns out she had swine flu. I realized as she kept coughing that I had the strongest desire to rub her back and ask her how she was holding up. But then I realized that a: Nazi prof would freak, b: she would look at me and be awkward, c: that's the last time I'd ever have someone sit next to me.

This feeling of loneliness increased to the point that I actually wanted to hug this swine flu girl. Crazy as it sounds against all reason in a rare moment of pure emotion I almost tried to hug this girl whose name I could only guess at. Suddenly my Conservative Victorian Baptist upbringing kicked in and I moved a few centimetres away from her and resumed staring at the clock and avoiding the Latin SS/Gestapo...

I asked her how she was at the end of class and stuff but I think she just thought I was more of a creepy stalker than a concerned co-human.

I hate myself, I wish I looked and acted welcoming to other people. I wish I could be the person others feel compelled to hug and actually spread some humanity, compassion, and charity (love/agape) to our overly synthetic world, but it appears my lot by Providence to remain the desiring rather than the fulfilled, the becoming rather than the being.

I went home, read some theology, ate some chocolate cake (which is just compounding all my problems), felt guilty and self-loathing because I ate it, and sat down to blog.

Andrew remanet solus. *** Alone, Andrew remains

'All the girls in every girlie magazine can't make me feel, any less alone. I'm reaching for the phone, to call at 7:03, on your machine I slur a plea for you to come home.' - Deathcab for Cutie

Latin, The Girl, and the Trip That Never Is

I switched my courses tonight for Brock. I decided to take Latin. I HAVE to learn it eventually for a masters in history or theology, so it was only a matter of time. Personally, I would've liked to put it off for a couple more years.

Languages are a funny thing for me, because I love them, I love the idea of speaking another language or reading it. But mostly Latin because it is the language of our history, the eternal langua Romani (Language of the Romans). I feel impowered when I know another language, I feel as if I could be a whole different person. For me, language is a many splendoured thing. But in honesty I suck at Latin. I tried alot, but never came up with enough effort to master the material. I hated the tenses and the necessity of precise endings, etc. I'm terrible at Latin, and so I'm conflicted, it's as if this door is open in front of me, and everyone tells me (including myself) that if I just tried hard enough I could get through it. But at the same time I'm weighed down with sloth and grammatical ignorance and I can't make it through.

There's a girl I saw tonight, the chances of her reading this blog are minimal so I don't mind posting it. Though it would be a typical chapter in my life if she saw it this one time. Anyway, this girl I saw tonight is a genius, and we have everything in common. I can't think of a time when I've been more foolish than when I tried to ask her out. It might possibly be the dumbest I've ever been. It was generic, obvious, and awkward. I was heart-broken for a while...actually I don't know if I have a heart, but I was very upset. In any case, she is not at all interested in me, but whenever I see her it's like the open door. I have this beautiful image of how happy I could be if we were even just friends, but I can't seem to make it. Again I'm weighed down and in my mind I keep telling myself ('it's your own fault' just like Latin). It makes me hate myself as I look at my gross unshaven gay-tee, and my morbidly obese sized t-shirts. I want to speak Latin, I want people to like me, I want to run again, I want to be healthy and suave and fit.

Finally, I have a trip that got postponed again, it's the 4th time now and I'm furious. I can't ask my boss for the 4th time to reschedule me. I'm so angry at my parents. It's totally out of my control, and it shows how little they respect me or my life. But obviously if I can't do anything right, why would they?

It's painfully clear to me what my Summum Bonum, my greatest good, is. To love myself enough to start running, to love my future enough to study Latin night and day and ace the class, and to then win the affections of the girl and live much more happily, for a little while at least.

God if you're listening, please help me. But I'm never as certain about anything as I am that I will fail. I will drag myself through latin, possibly dropping it, failing, or barely passing. I will embarrass myself infront of the girl and focus her annoyances on me into dislike, and I will remain the same blob, sitting in bed, crying out to God, crying out on this blog, crying out to the no one who is listening. Such seems my life.

But maybe everything will change, maybe I will acheive my Summum Bonum, that I will feel Eudaimonea. That small pathetic hope lives on somewhere in the cynicism and pessimism of my soul, and that is why I will wake up tomorrow, and read a chapter of my latin book, and go to work, and try to eat healthy. In the hope that everything might change. Tolkien taught me hope, and I don't know whether to blame or thank him for it.

Domine misere mei.