I basically always have the attention span of a gnat but the heat makes it even worse.  After 10 minutes of watching a movie I’d switch to reading, then as soon as an email comes in I’d read that, then go back to the book for another page before deciding I wanted to go back to the movie again, which after 5 minutes of viewing I’d decide I should reply to that email, and so on so forth.  So after migrating to the basement for a couple hours I finally managed to finish reading “A Scanner Darkly”.  I watched the movie a couple years ago and never quite understood it, although I found the animation technique and visuals to be quite amazing.  Reading the book did indeed make the story much clearer, though there was actually less to the story than I expected.  Perhaps I always expect a lot to be there whenever I don’t understand something.  There was more to the ending than I’d realized, which I got only after I read it up.  Incidentally I have no recollection of how the film ended at all.  It’s like I’m one of the characters.

The author says there is no moral to the story; that’s really just his way of saying the story is much more than your average story.  It is like, life.  But of course there is a moral, and it’s that, in the words of Mr. Mackey, “Drugs are bad, m’kay”.  Duly noted, but the more intriguing aspects of the story are really how reality becomes distorted and questionable for the protagonist, and how there is still a glimmer of shimmery hope for him even though it seems he’s faced with a tragic demise.  All is not lost.  Possibly.

On that note, it’s time to get back to “Schindler’s List”.

Blurbs on Happiness (all I know on it):

• Happiness is another one of those bad terms, bad in the sense that it could hardly be defined, or that there isn’t a clear-cut criteria for it.  Like “life”.  That’s why “What is the meaning of life?” is the most-asked question and “What is happiness?” is the second.
• The most insightful quote on happiness (except this is paraphrased and thus not a quote): Be ready for a world of pain if you expect someone else to bring you happiness… it’ll never last and just like for everything else you can only depend on yourself.
• Happiness…is not a fish that you can catch.  By Our Lady Peace.
• Happiness is not forever.  It is not a diamond.  Even diamonds could only produce temporary happiness.  This stems from people always wanting what they can’t have or don’t have.  Human nature is not designed to be compatible with happiness.  So that means happiness is relative (i.e. one could really only attain happiness by comparing down… to others less fortunate,  to less satisfactory moments, etc.), and not absolute.   That is why people in poorer countries are more happy; the fact that they are info-deprived enables them to not know what they don’t have.  Hence the saying “ignorance is bliss”.  This is a proper time to use the term “ironic”.
• It’s probably not possible to achieve long-term (relatively) happiness if you couldn’t even get short-term happiness with where you’re at.  But I’m not sure.
• To know what makes you happy, you must consciously realize that you’re happy, when you are.  But happiness is often fleeting and it’s easy to let slip that meta-happiness (happy being happy) moment.  Perhaps you could only know it when you’re yearning for the thing that made you happy, but that doesn’t always happen either.
• After all this it’s still better to believe some individuals have truly felt happy by the end of their lives.  Like maybe Ghandi or Mother Teresa.  But only they would know.

Very restless. Also very unproductive. And very aimless. I think I actually went on Facebook 7 or 8 times, for like 6 seconds. More or less.

Well there’s that old saying: When in distress, make brownies.
I also make stuff up when I’m distressed.

But not distressed enough to not try a new recipe:

Deep Dish Brownies

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/3 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/3 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a pan.
2. In a large bowl, blend melted butter, sugar and vanilla. Beat in eggs one at a time. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Gradually blend into the egg mixture. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.
   

   Obviously ignoring the deep-dishery of it.

3. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Let brownies cool, then cut into squares.

Nice thin sheets of brownies.

Results: I think this is the first time I’ve baked something that didn’t end up being too sweet.  In fact it’s hardly sweet at all.  It smelled great from the oven but I can’t tolerate brownies tasting like Brownies Zero.  Either this recipe is a bust or I don’t have the capability to bake when I’m feeling agitated.

I want to get rid of the belongings that I don’t need, but I don’t want to create garbage.
I want the courage to do what I want. I want to be like Cartman. Just not short and fat.
I want to shake free of my past. My past is part of who I am, but it’s inhibiting me from being who I want to be.
I want the nights to be clear all the time, so the stars are always visible. It could be cloudy during the day. Though of course not always.
I want to cry whenever I feel the need to. Even when my milk is not spilt.
I want to change. Not my clothes, but me. Not my core, but my disposition.
I want everyone to be happy with what they have. Because I’m a hypocrite and dislike having ungrateful people around me. It doesn’t mean they can’t be ambitious. Happiness does not equal satisfaction.
I want to be my own person, not my parent’s. So far it’s been difficult. I may have to move far far away, and convince them not to follow me.
I want to do what I want without being judged. But I’ve just realized that’s impossible. I will always be judged, though not necessarily negatively and not always openly.
I want chocolate. I might make some brownies tonight.
I want the energy and motivation to get things done. I only have that for the things I want to do. That means I need to change the way I think, so
I want to change the way I think. I’ve always envisioned being able to accomplish that by hitting my head forcefully enough so that my brain is restructured in a certain way. That goes back to having the courage to do what I want.
I want to live everyday like it’s my last. But I have things planned for the weekend, so it’s better if the weekend is my last.

Music is very important for my sessions. When I say ‘unworldly’ music, I mean music that makes me feel like I’m not here, that I’m someplace else, possibly in another realm. And that it’s okay even when I’m by myself at that place. It’s the kind of music that makes you not feel lonely even if you’re alone, as long as that music is there enveloping you. This kind of music is capable of making me feel displaced when I listen to it, but in a good way. It instantly makes “life” feel better, like it doesn’t matter much even if something crappy happens to you, because you’re really only a fleeting speckle of dust in this world and you don’t really matter (again in a good way), and hence the things that happen to you matter even less. Music that has the ability to take you somewhere else is good music.

I have this occasional habit of standing in front of my bedroom window late at night with some sticks and some unworldly music playing in the background. It’s a good time for some deeper thinking that can’t be done during the day. It’s also a good time for making unusual observations. Tonight I saw a white-lighted flying object with a flashing red light cruising from east to west, which I see occasionally and therefore isn’t unusual. But then I saw another similar flying object going in the exact opposite direction, and from where I was standing it looked as if they were at the exact same height. In actuality they were probably quite a distance from each another. This doesn’t sound very interesting, but at the moment when they were about to pass one another I honestly thought there was going to be a colossal collision. I was already envisioning how the sparks would fly before they actually crossed paths.

A moment later a bigger (probably just closer) object of the same kind flew by, from west to east. That’s it.

It’s uneventful on most of the nights I do this, but here are some things I’ve observed on other nights:

A car parked in the middle of the street with its engine running. It stays at the exact spot for at least 45 minutes. I start imagining what’s happening inside. It involves a couple and a dare (my mind never goes much farther than that, really).

My Korean neighbours coming home at 3 in the morning. This has been observed several times.

My Korean neighbours watching “Underworld” (or its sequel) on DVD, or maybe blue-ray. It’s definitely high-def. This is the only time I’ve seen them use the living room.

Speaking of DID, I was so fascinated with it for a little while several years back (it used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder in those days) that I actually wrote a freestyle paper on it for first-year English. I was introduced to it by an article I read in Sassy even some years before that (probably when I was in sixth or seventh grade). It was about an ordinary-looking girl who had the disorder, whom was followed around by the writer for the day. The concept of a person who was so traumatized by some event in their life that they had to subconsciously conjure up other identities to deal with it was enthralling to me. The entire illness is so mystic — how the number of identities could keep increasing as time goes on, the way some identities know about the other identities and some don’t, the way the identities could come and go spontaneously — it’s all very strange and sometimes you have to wonder whether the person is really just faking it, as was found in some real cases. I’d rather think they aren’t and that this is something that could possibly occur in nature. Mutants are intriguing.