experiences, life, learning and relationships.

Other than waiting to apply, or finding something to occupy myself for a year or two before I can accomplish my goal, the most difficult side of the JET program goal is my current relationship. Ashley loves Japan, she has been obsessed with it sense she was a little girl. Her minor in college is Japanese, her art often focuses on Asian cultures, she loves eating Japanese food, etc. She is the one that told me the name of the JET program. I think she regrets this last one. even though she loves Japan and is facinated about it, she dosent know if she wants to apply to it. She wants me to wait another year for her to get out of school so we can apply together, assuming she decides to apply at all. this dosent make any sense to me, even if we applied together we don't want to go to the same place, even if we did want to go to the same place I don't think they would place us there. Also I don't want to do this with some one that I know. If I did then I don't think I would get the same out of the experience. She has become fairly spiteful about any aspect of it. Me learning Japanese makes her upset especially if I learn a word that she dosent know or make a mistake when studying. To her saving my money for the cause seems pointless because I haven't been accepted yet. She thinks I am a fool to leave my Job that I really do love for some thing that I don't know if I will enjoy or not. Heck she doesn't even read this blog even though I talk about it and the other blogs that I read all the time. When I apply in late August or September I assume we will have a huge knock down drag out fight about it and the same if I get an interview or accepted.

Her concerns and emotional qualms have a base to them. She knows that if I am accepted it is probably the end of our relationship. I guess that is a horrible thing to say but it is within all likely hood true. I guess this project is fairly selfish on my part but I think it is to great an opportunity to pass up.

life and experiences

as some of you know, I am an atheist. I believe that when we die all consciousness ceases and that is that. This is one of the main driving forces in my life. People have posed the question "what is the meaning of life?" of course their is no solid anser to that but to me it turns more into a goal than a meaning. so here it is... I was born to procreate eventualy, to learn as much as I can, and to experiance as much as possible.

I have always learned new things in an obsessive manner, my family can atest to that. I will focus in on one or two things untill I think I have learned enough of it and then I drop it. This was more prominate in my life untill around the time that I moved off to college. at that point my goals shifted to atempt to experiance as much as I can. I still love to learn but I look at what I can gain from experiances as a powerful teacher.

I have been contemplating exactly what is drawing me to attempt to move to Japan and I have concluded that the two main reasons are to learn and experiance. It is such a good chance to do those two things that I would be a fool not to try.

Unfortunately Experiances, learning and Japan have become a sore subject in my releationship. Ill explain in the next post...

ok so music is another thing to look in to

OK so I'm am still looking in to all kinds of things now that I am out of college and have decided that I must learn more and more about random things that I don't feel that I have explored enough. So the other day I decided that music was one of those things that I should add to the list. So here is the starter list that I have made over the last two days compiled from several Friends that I think have unique out looks on music.

• The Arcade fire
• At the drive in
• Cattle decapitation
• glass jaw
• Hank snow
• cursive
• holy molar
• negative land
• guapo
• sleepy time gorilla museum
• download
• Mr Bungle
• Tom Waits
• John Coltrane
  
• Nick Cave
• Golelin
• Morphine
• T Bone Burrnett
• Guapo
• Iron and Wine
• Ghost Hand Observatory
• LCD Sound System
• Dandy Warhols
• Silver sun pickups
• Chromeo
• Richard Wagner
• Mike Oldfield
• Muddy Rivers

That is the start of the list if anyone wants to add to that list please feel free to comment and help my musical boarders be broadened.

Police are stupid

Ok so I am at UAB's ceramic studio with my girlfriend making sure she is not carried off. For those of you that don't know her personally she is 4'11" tall and could literally be carried off. any how there is a person in her class that has a personality/mental disorder and he decides to get drunk. So as the hours go by and he becomes more demented and talks to various invisible people, slams things on the tables, breaks beer bottles on the kilns, breaks old sculptures, writes messages that are illegible all over the boards, and cusses out the other students. I finally had enough. I called the professor and got no answers.... I called him again 20 min later, no answers. 30 more min go by and he starts cussing out Ashley, my girlfriend, because she asked him a simple question. So I called campus police to deal with him. in about 1 min 3 cops were their asking me questions and pulling this guy out of the studio. in 3 minutes their were 12 cops there I guess for back up or because they were bored. some how the man in question, who is in his late 30s, starts telling the cops that me and another person were not students in the class, which was true. I tell the cop that I am there to make sure my girlfriend is safe he told me that it didn't matter and me and the other guy would have to leave.... so I left, the other guy left, and the drunk guy left. All this happened at 11:00 at night in Birmingham AL. Our wonderful city fluctuates from the number 9 to the number 11 most homicides in the United States every year. In the campus news paper they tell how many people are mugged, how many cars are broken in to etc every week, it usually takes up a few pages. I digress I called the cops and I wound up getting thrown out that's kind of messed up. Oh well I will go have breakfast over at the professor over that studios house in the morning and tell him what all happened. Did I mention that I have taken 13 classes with that professor and house sit for him on a regular basis? We will see tomorrow.

home to Tokyo

so my friend Teaki or Takeru is moving back home to Tokyo on Monday. I am going to hang out with him for the last time tonight. I have known teak for about 6 years now he is a very charismatic person who has this crazy ability to make most people want to help him. but he let some paper work laps and all those that wanted to help him could not so he has to go back home for an extended stay for the first time in many years. I must say that I will miss him a lot but hopefully he will get his paper work fixed and will come back in the next year. On the bright side, if it takes him longer then I can go see him if I don't get into the JET program!

As of late

So the semester is over and now I am worrying about how to retain all of the information that I have learned over the last 4 months untill I get to my next class in the fall. I think that I will use lists that I am making from Iknow.jp.co along with videos from a web sight that my sensei told me about that her husband was the host of http://www.gpb.org/irasshai. These videos are really funny in that I cant believe how bad this is funny and they were filmed in the late 80s to early 90s so that just adds to the atmosphere. but there are a nice number of these videos so I will give them a shot in the interest of not loosing what I have learned. more over I will communicate with Ashley as much as I can that does seem to help us both in our studies.

I would like to send out a huge congratulations to Sean from the blog flyingsound. He was accepted into the JET program and is awaiting assignment. The more people I see achieve their goal in getting into JET and the more people I meet that have been in it. The more I feel that it is an achievable goal. All I have to do now is wait for application time and get to it. It is kind of scary, this single goal has become the main focal point of my life as of late. Most things that I have done as of the last 6 or so months has been with the thought "This can or could help me get into the JET program or could help me if I get into the JET program." I hope that it is not all for naught.

new ideas

So I have been swamped with the combination of working at my job, getting ready for Magic city art connection, and getting ready for my Japanese finals(there are two of them). All of this happens in the next 9 days and has limited what I can do or have time to do.

Despite all that, I have been thinking a lot about reading. I am not a very avid reader and that is precisely the problem. I was thinking about ulterior motives that North Korea could have for all of its posturing in the past and how small of a country it is and I kept thinking about the book the mouse that roared. I know what it is about but I have never read it, so I decided to buy it off of amazon. purchasing this old book reminded me that I am lost when it comes to books that well read people consider standard. Though I don't know what this will accomplish but I think I am going to start reading a lot of the "classics" if you can call them that on top of that I have been asking several people the question "If you could recommend 3 or 4 books that you think every one should read what would they be?" some of the stuff that has come up has been fairly expected and then some of it has been surprising. So I think that I am going to add these books into the ones that I read to make the reading list a little more well rounded and modernize it a little.

I wonder how this experiment of becoming well read will turn out and what I will take away from it? I guess Ill have a better idea after the first 50 or so books. I will post a list of books that I have compiled both new and old, suggested and off reading lists, when I have compiled it a little better in about a week until that happens. I think I am going to post a blurb about each book I read and what I take from it also so I hope I don't bore you all to death with that. Finally I want to know what you all think about this and hear your ideas. If you could recommend 3 or 4 books that you think every one should read what would they be?