Thoughts and Ideas

• A while back in another entry, I remember talking about how I took Erin to her junior year Homecoming dance. Something I intentionally did not mention was that Allison had taken a picture of us dancing. Here is a scanned copy of that photo:
  
  
  Pictured (Left to Right): Erin Schmucker and Eric Joseph (Me)
  Allow me to give some background on this picture. I did not necessarily hate it, but I did not want to see it or know of its existence, so I guess you can say that I loathed it. If you notice, there is a white dot in the upper middle portion; that is not from any light source, but rather, Steve had been carrying it around for a while and he pinned it up somewhere along there. I can remember numerous times where I would come over to his house or dorm, he would hand the picture to me expecting me to be eager to take it, and I would put it back on his desk or a shelf when he was not looking.
  
  The reason for this was not because I disliked Erin to any degree, but rather, because I disliked the picture. I felt that it was like (To use a clichéd term) having my cake but being unable to eat it. I wanted a picture of Erin's beautiful face, her precious smile, and her sparkling eyes, but I instead got a picture of me. And for a long time, I could not get over the fact that all I could see in the picture was the back of Erin and a smiling kid holding her who could not stop wondering if he should have shaved the day of the Homecoming (Yes, I am referring to myself).
  
  Not that long ago, Steve made sure that I took the picture back; in fact, he came over to my pathetic excuse of a dorm and dropped off the picture just to see that I had it. And for a while after that, I did not want to look at it. However, one morning after my roommate's alarm clock woke me up half of an hour early, I sat at my desk and stared at the picture, looking over it in a daze. Yet, I felt no hate; I felt good and much better than I had been during the majority of the semester. It reminded me of a time when I had a boatload of fun with a woman whom I in love with and enjoy spending any amount of time with. I remembered how bad my dancing skills are and how my smile was stuck on my face for so long that my cheeks were hurting long after I dropped off Erin at her house. I remembered being embarrassed at the fact that my penis was erect while dancing some of the time with Erin, how I bumped it into her multiple times purely by accident (Seriously), and how she only smiled back and quietly ignored it. I remembered just how good it felt to have her in my arms like that for so long.
  
  So really, I look at this picture from two perspectives now. On the plus side, the picture has a good shot of Erin's cute butt.
• I have seen the movie Kill Bill Volume One twice now. I like how it accurately pays homage to Japanese samurai without making things become too silly. And hell, I like it just because I like Quentin Tarantino's filmmaking style; I like that brutally bluntness, those timely one-liners, and the thoughtful dialogues that characters have with one another. However, one thing I never particularly liked was Uma Thurman. She starred in and was on the front cover of the VHS for Pulp Fiction, and although her character was supposed to be sexy, I never found her to be sexy at all. Do not get me wrong; she is not ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but she did not look how I imagined Mia Wallace was supposed to look. When I saw her in Kill Bill Volume One, she seemed to fit her role much better because it did not ask her to be particularly sexy in any manner. However, during one scene, she walks into a small Japanese bar in order to talk to an ex-katana-maker and she smiled upon seeing the bartender. Now, I usually do not say anything at all while watching a movie, but when I saw her pearly white smile the first time I watched the movie, I blurted out "HOLY SHIT, SHE'S FUCKING GORGEOUS!" Seriously, she is a golden example (To me, at least) of how smiling makes women look better. I see dozen of supermodels on calendars just staring at or away from the camera as they pose, and none of them ever really look that good because they never smile. Hell, if Erin never smiled as much as she did, I probably would never have grown to love her as much as I do; her smile just made her that much more beautiful (No, I am not saying that I am only attracted to Erin because of her beauty; I am saying that her smile is what made her stand out and it caught my attention in a flash).
  
  For all the lovely ladies out there, SMILE!
• Call me old-fashioned if you want, but I do not understand why people need to say "nigga" instead of "nigger." Is "nigga" supposed to be any less derogatory than saying "nigger"? The same can be said for "biotch" and "bitch." Do everyone a big favor and at least learn to spell your vulgar language properly.
  
  On a similar thought, the term "honkey" is supposed to be a derogatory word for "white people" just how "nigger" is supposed to be a derogatory word for "black people", just how "slant" or "chinky" is supposed to be a derogatory word for "Asian people", just how "redskin" is supposed to be a derogatory term for "Native Americans", et cetera. However, since I do not actively recognize "honkey" as being derogatory, does that still mean that it is a derogatory word if I take no offense to it at all? Bikutoru and I had this conversation a while ago, and although I forget what conclusion we both came to, I do remember that we agreed that a vulgar word could only be vulgar if both parties interacting recognized the word or the word's usage as being vulgar.
  
  Go ahead and look up the meaning of "faggot" in the dictionary and see what you find. The definition does not paint the picture of a vulgar word.
• There were quite a few entries in this blog that I wrote in rapid succession, or at least, what I consider to be rapid. Basically, six entries in three days is quite a lot, but that is because I had a lot to update on. However, I do not really think that those entries and a few entries after those are up to my par; they felt rushed and rather sloppy. However, I notice that when I take a few days to write an entry or I have all of the thoughts in my head and the feelings in my heart bunched up (Like when I write about Erin), I write better entries. And I like doing it this way. However, when I was busy cranking out reviews for Anime Academy, it would only take me an hour or two to pump one out. The big difference is that I try to keep my Anime Academy reviews around 400 words and that I try to get my blog entries as close to the 10,000 character limit as possible. Still, I do not like to rush what I write.
• On Wednesday (December 31st), I went with my mother over to the Hershey Outlets to buy a pair of running shoes. I ended up getting a pair of Adidas Sambas and a pair of Nike Air Storm Pegasus. The reason why I wanted to get a pair of running shoes was because I want to get back into shape; I mean, when you look at the scale and it reads that you weigh almost 160 lbs without any clothes on, you get scared. I need to divert some more time to staying in shape and keeping my weight around 150 lbs (I would be happy with 140 lbs, but getting down that low would require a healthy diet, and there is nothing healthy about Pitt's fast food). As far as the Sambas, this is the fourth pair I have bought, and I even told my mother that I felt like a cartoon character when I realized how many pairs I have gone through (Cartoon characters tend to wear the same clothing and shoes). I have had the third pair, which I am currently still wearing, since my senior year in high school, so that makes them about three years old. However, the tread on them is still decent, so I think I will keep the fourth pair in the closet until I run the third pair into the ground.
• Happy New Years!
• Although I will not retell the entire story of my 2004 New Years party, I was talking with Allison about Erin towards the end of it (About 4:15 AM). In short, she helped me paint another portion of how I see Erin. In long, she basically said that Erin was usually at extreme moods during high school. By that, I mean that she was either very peppy and upbeat or very depressed and saddened. Allison did not give me any specific examples of this behavior, and I have mostly only experienced the happier side of those mood swings. However, Allison did say that Erin had mellowed out since she went to college, and such mood swings have become far rarer.
  
  Still, that does not deter me in the slightest. I am still deeply interested in learning more about the woman that I love, although I should just talk to her directly about such things rather than finding out from her friends.
• I am still stuck on page 150 of Battle Royale, and I think I will take it back up with me to Pitt so I can start it over from the beginning and read the entire book. Also, I got a free copy of the Book of Mormon a few years ago, and I think I should read it this semester as well. The reason behind that decision has more to do with wanting to understand the religion that Erin was brought up on rather than wanting to gain a better understanding of non-Christian religions.