I just wanted to say that my girlfriend broke up with me today. I am dead inside.

Yesterday I visited my dad in the hospital. He's been in the hospital for a little while even though the firefighters said that he wouldn't be in there very long. The problem with healthcare professionals and all those people we put our trust in, they can still make mistakes because they are humans. We are all human and we all make mistakes, so it's not very uncommon for a misdiagnosis. I'll never forget when I had a problem with dandruff and all my doctors were just calling it dandruff when one doctor told me that it was actually Sebbhoric Psorasis. Within a week or so, my conditions were better. I still get dandruff but it's not in clumps or scalp irritation. My dad has a big tube that is in his side which, I guess, drains all the liquid that needs to be drained out. It's actually a lot of blood and my initial thought on seeing the device was "man...I bet [my sister] must've freaked out seeing that." When my sister sees blood, she practically passes out. The last time I saw her pass out was when I was like 12 years old and one of the dogs had to be taken to the vet. I remember looking to my left and seeing my sister fall to the floor and I had no idea what was going on.

I wasn't really excited about going to work yesterday because I've got a popped blister on the back of my heel and it hurts like hell to wear shoes. Yesterday at work, I was almost at the point of tears. It actually hurt worse driving to work which didn't help the fact that there was a lot of traffic and I was about 5-10 minutes late to work. Driving there, I was extremely pissed off because I left around 4:40 PM but had to get gas real quick. Had I left around 4:30, I would've gotten there 30 minutes early. However, this helped me realize that I have to get gas and everything before 4:40 PM or else I'll be late to work. Since I have to leave around traffic time, there is no such thing as "arriving on time." It's either getting there early, or getting there late.

Before work started, I took some Tylonel to see if it'd help with my foot but I couldn't walk on my foot real well till about half way through. I had a slight limp and I'm not sure anyone noticed. There was a point where I just said "fuck it" and took the pain because I didn't have a choice. After a while, my mind stopped thinking about it and I was able to focus on work again.

A funny thing though was I just found out that this week was "employee apprecation week." A lot of people have been walking around with coke cans and I just thought that there was a vending machine around here that sells coke cans and people just like Coke. However, I found out that there was a cooler, provided by my job, that was filled with ice and coke and free for all employees; that explains the two pallets full of 20 pack Cokes that I've seen the past week. I wish I had known Monday that I had access to such sweet nectar, but now I'll only be able to enjoy Coke on Friday. Well, that's good enough for me considering today I'll be getting my pay check and I'll be visiting my girlfriend for the weekend.

There's a couple things I have to do today, no big deal, so I plan on waking up around 11:30 and doing some shit before I go to work. Also, I'm kind of screwing up on my Coke addictions, but Coke tastes so satisfying when you're dehydrated and sweating. Coca-cola makes Gatorade, I believe, which isn't very surprising either.

That's pretty much what's been going on lately.

Lately, I've been trying to adjust to my new job. I've been learning a lot about my job and I'm getting better and better at it, but I've had blisters on my right foot ever since I started working there and they really hurt. If I didn't have blisters and my steel toe boots were comfortable, I probably wouldn't have such a bad time. I don't know why I decided to shop at Wal-Mart because I really hate that place, but I really didn't have much of a choice considering I was doing last minute shopping. I would've gotten decent steel toe boots at Payless, but they were out and the only ones they had on display were actually different size shoes.

But that was my mistake, and I really don't want to buy another 50 dollar pair of boots until I save up some money.

One of the worst things I dislike about the job is the unreliable people who tell you where to put things. Probably about 70% of the time, the people I'm looking for are not around to tell me where to put things so I'm pretty much standing in the middle of the area looking around and wasting time. I probably spend more time waiting than actually working, and I'm sure everything is documented. They'll look up my score at the corporate office and ask why I'm averaging X amount of product per hour or whatever, and I'll have to explain myself. The company claims that it's about doing the right thing and I haven't found any shady things yet; in fact, just yesterday they cooked hamburgers and hotdogs for us. I went home tired and a hamburger in my lap while I drove back home, so I thought that was really nice. However, doing the right thing decreases your productivity significantly because I could easily just throw stuff in there and use my own judgement, but I'd piss off people.

Also, when product comes in...they're never really organized. Sometimes they'll be sets of product with a certain code all over the trailer and you have to squeeze through pallets of product to find anything (if you have room). Since you have to scan everything, you can't just throw stuff in trailers and hope it's correct because there's a lot of product that we deal with and we don't want to get in trouble for stuff that we didn't do. If we're short on product, we gotta indicate that we didn't really get it. As you can imagine, you can't really be disorganized and cut around corners. I'm learning tricks here and there but a lot of time is spent waiting and finding product rather than actually transferring product from one trailer to the next. To make matters worse, the people who drive fork lifts may or may not help you. A lot of the time, I'm assigned to a trailer by myself and eventually people are assigned to help me. I just feel really slow sometimes and don't know if I'm doing a good job.

Sometimes I'll sweat a lot while other times I won't sweat that much. I try to stay hydrated. Having a big bottle of Gatorade really does help but buying Gatorade at the gas station is a costly habit so I try to refrain from it. I supposedly get my first paycheck on Friday so I'll be able to calculate how much money I spend on gas a week and all that stuff. I actually have to pay 500 dollars of car insurance next week so I'll be feeling pretty poor for a little while even though I'm working.

But at least I have some sort of income coming in because I only had 200 dollars left in my bank account before I'd have absolutely no money. Thankfully, my job hired me so it's giving me an opportunity to build up my resume with actual valuable job experience, and it's more than what I was making at Kroger.

Recently my dad got into a motorcycle accident. From what he told me, he was driving around the neighborhood and was trying to avoid a car after it pulled out in front of him or something like that and ended up tumbling over a curb. The bike wasn't damaged at all and at the time, he felt he wasn't either until the adrenaline stopped. Apparently he fractured a rib cage and one of his lungs got punctured in the process, so he had difficulty breathing. I woke up a couple days ago around 7 to the sound of keys and a walkie-talkie and I thought my dad had died in his sleep. He's okay though, but he's still in the hospital and probably won't be able to do anything for a couple months which leaves me with a lot of responsibility around the house. I don't have much time to do them besides Tuesday and Thursday morning, so I won't be able to get good amount of sleep. Unless, of course, I decide to go to bed right when I get home from work which is unrealistic. I'm tired but I want to enjoy a can of Coke and some entertainment for a little while. Otherwise, I'm gonna blow up like a balloon with mixed emotions and it's going to cause the weekend to suck because I'd be pissed off. I only get to see my girlfriend for about 58 hours a week. We sleep for about 9 hours, so we only really see each other for 31 hours and spend the rest sleeping next to each other. I'm just glad to be able to relax and enjoy a day off, but the physical exhaustion takes its toll because last weekend...I didn't want to do a damn thing. I just wanted to lay in bed and relax but a relationship doesn't really thrive when you don't do things together. We played some video games, sure, but my girlfriend and I want to go out and view the world but when my muscles ache and my feet hurt...it demotivates me. So that's something that I'll have to learn to deal with.

Today I'll be visiting my dad in the hospital for a little while and I plan on cleaning my room a little bit since I have a little bit of time afterwards. Due to the time of day that I go to work, I actually have to leave a long time before in order to be on time. When everyone is coming home from work, I'm going to work so there's a lot of traffic. Normally the drive takes about 30 minutes, but it takes me double the time and sometimes more. If I leave at 4:50 PM, I arrive 2-5 minutes early. If I leave at 4:45 PM, I'll be 30 minutes early. 2-5 minutes isn't much to work with because a street light could easily make me late. So I leave around 4:30 PM to 4:40, and that's where my gas mileage suffers; that and I travel to different cities to go to my two Communications classes.

Both my communications teachers are vastly different and it's very apparent. My 10 AM class Communication teacher doesn't really care a whole lot about her job. Last class, she spent 30 minutes looking over the top 250 movies on IMDB. I've had to wait 2-3 weeks to present my webpage which is great and everything but I really want to get that shit over with. My 2:30 PM class is very fun. I like my teacher because she's very personal with you. The whole class drinks alcohol, even the teacher, and I feel completely out of place.

That's all for now.

Yesterday was my first day at my new job. I tried going in with an open-mind because I didn't know what to expect. I had this idea that pretty much what I was doing was taking stuff off a truck and loading it onto another one, and it's not really that far off; that's generally the concept, but it's much more detailed. Yesterday morning, I had to wake up early because I had to go buy black shorts, leather gloves, and steel-toe boots. The leather gloves weren't a problem because I had researched where to find some gloves and I fortunately found the same kind of gloves at Wal-Mart that were a different color. I thought I'd be able to find the black shorts at Wal-Mart, but I was mistaken. Turns out they put all the mens shorts on sale the week before so all they had left was grey pants and what not. I didn't want to look for boots at Wal-Mart because I know that they'd probably break somehow two months down the road. Also, they wouldn't be very comfortable. I did some research the night before and found some decent boots at Payless, so I went to Payless after Wal-Mart. I found the size I wanted and went to go check out, but the guy looked at the bottom of the shoes and said that one was a 9 and 1/2 while the other was a size 10. That was the last 9 1/2 size boot, so I decided to go home at this point so that I could research where to find shorts.

To make a long story short, I went to about 3 other places before I went back to Wal-Mart to buy some steel-toe boots, and then I traveled to Target where I found some black cargo shorts. Three or so hours later, I got what I needed and was just waiting to go to work. I left around 4:15 because I didn't know how much traffic there was going to be, and I ended up being 30 minutes early. I wanted to sit in the car for a little while, but it was too hot so I decided around 5:10 to go ahead and tell them I'm here and everything.

I started working around 5:30 PM and around 7:30-7:45 PM, I started to get a little winded. By this time, my shirt was soaking with sweat and I was starting to feel the exhaustion till then. My feet started to hurt, which is what my interviewer said what would happen the first couple weeks, and my mouth became increasingly dry. I was working with one of the supervisors, who said I was keeping a good pace with him, and I didn't know if I could take a water break or not. I found out that they have a fridge where you can put water, and there's a water fountain, and you can get water pretty much anytime you want. Had I drank water consistently, I probably would've been better but it's no matter. Time went by relatively quick the first half of working, but started to get a little slower. Since the area is smaller and there's many workers driving forklifts and stuff, you don't really have the opportunity to day dream or anything like that. If you fall behind, you can easily make mistakes. Plus, you don't have a set time to leave because you leave when the job is finished. We could've left at 10, but we didn't get done till about 10:45 PM.

I underestimated how tired I was going to get, but that's okay. I think that I had a lot of things going on at once and if I loosen up, I'll be able to work consistently faster rather than over-exert myself the first half and slow down a little the second.

Today is my second day at work, feeling a little bit tired but nothing medicine won't fix. I'm going to school in a bit so I get a little bit time to build up energy. We'll see what happens.

Started working and I'm tired. I'm going to sum up everything: it's hard work, my feet hurt, it was awkward at first since I didn't know what I was doing, probably made a few mistakes working, complicated stuff going on, didn't get home till late, hard work, and...that's about it. I'm tired, so I'm gonna go play some Team Fortress 2 for about 15 minutes, and then I'm gonna go to bed.

Based on my previous entry, I thought that I was going away but it appears I might be back for a year considering someone bought me a year of Xanga blogging for free. I would like to credit christao408 for being considerate enough to lend me a year subscription to Xanga. If it weren't for christao408, I wouldn't be blogging on my Xanga right now. Since I've been given a second chance, I've decided to start blogging again.

I tried blogging on Google, but it wasn't the same. I've been on Xanga for too long and I just wasn't willing to give up that easily so I decided to give a chance. With that being said...a lot has happened since I last posted.

First and foremost, I got a job today; it's my first legitimate job that doesn't involve a grocery store and I'm very excited because it's something that I'm interested in doing because it's going to help me work out, it's gonna make me more money than when I worked at Kroger, and I'm only working four hours Monday through Friday. I also have the weekends off, based on what he said at the interview, so that'll be good also. What I'm going to be doing, from my understanding, is loading palettes into the back of trucks to be hauled away using fork-lights and what not. I actually know very little about my job description, but I'm going to be trained by someone who knows the ropes and I feel that if I pay attention to everything and really try to learn...it won't be so bad.

The guy who interviewed me told me that my first couple weeks are going to suck since I'm going to be breaking in shoes and working out muscles I haven't worked out in a while, but it's not like I haven't done it before and I'm open to the challenge. If I'm able to pull everything off, it'll be good for my resume later on because it'll show future employers that I can do more than just stand behind a fish counter. All around, this job will benefit me. The location is not so convenient, but it's worth the drive and I feel that it will benefit me in the long run if I'm able to save up some money to upgrade on a reliable vehicle. Also, I'll be able to afford buying things again. I've been out of the job for a while and have therefore had to rely on all the money I had. My stocks are pretty much all gone and I only had less than 200 dollars left in my bank account before I got hired. Considering I only sent out three applications to different places, I was putting myself at risk. If I didn't get the job, I would've been left with nothing and would've eventually had to go back to Kroger probably being a bagger again making minimum wage even though I've had experience with all those things. Ever since I quit, I've only been to my previous job twice. I should've said hello to some people but I really hated the place. I shop at Publix just to avoid going to that Kroger because it reminds me of how miserable I was. I'm very happy that I managed to get out of there because although I was making money, I wasn't really happy because the way Kroger motivates you is by always changing things around. They'll never tell you good job personally, but they'll certainly tell you your faults in your face. The previous manager that worked there got on my nerves because she's always had that mentality that she's always right, and you're always wrong. If something were to happen, Kroger wouldn't back you up. In a way, that's how most businesses are considering the amount of paperwork that you have to sign and whatnot. You literally have to sign up with a union or else Kroger will walk right over you if they had the chance. To you, you're just a number. They'll fire you and hire someone else the next day because there's always people willing to do shitty work for shitty pay. But this job looks promising since it'll challenge me, but reward me as well; not only financially, but I'll hopefully be getting weekends off so I'll still get to spend Saturday and Sunday doing school work and whatnot.

So that's great news that I finally am getting back in the groove of things and have the possibility of saving up some money and gaining valuable job experience. The problem is that I start work tomorrow and I still have to buy some clothes and some steel-toe boots. The guy said that Wal-mart should have them, but Wal-Mart is the most unreliable place. They've got everything, and yet they never have what you want. I try to avoid Wal-Mart as much as possible, so I plan on waking up a little bit early to do my shopping in case Wal-Mart doesn't have what I need. I want to make a positive impression so these next couple weeks are going to be challenging because I want to try and excel where other newbies have trouble adjusting to. I have a little bit of background doing hard work so I know what needs to be done, and I'm feeling really good about it. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm still nervous as hell and adjust as good as I think I will. I'm keeping an open-mind as long as I keep open ears. On the bright side, it's only 4-5 hours a day so it's considerably less than what I got at Kroger, but I'll be making more and actually keeping myself pre-occupied. The worst thing about Kroger was how slow it was at times because there's nothing to do besides "busy work." To me, if you're just doing busy-work, you're wasting your time.

With that being said, things are looking up. I've been dealing with some MAJOR MAJOR addictions lately and I'm doing a fantastic job. I went from drinking 8-10 cans of Coke a day to about 0-1 a day in a short period of time. I've also been dealing with other addictions that are affecting my life, but I've been dealing with them very well as well. Basically, I've been improving myself a lot these past couple or so weeks and I'm really starting to feel good about myself again.

With my next paycheck, I plan on sending my favorite watch to the repair shop and having them repair it for 90 dollars. I also got my school refund check, so I've been paying back my family member for all the money I've borrowed for books and tuition. I'm suspecting that by the end of September, I'll be on the right track.

Aside from all that, my girlfriend and I are doing better. We don't get into as much fights as we used to, but there are still some dark times.

I've also started school and still trying to get into the school mood again. I'm taking a class online and it's quite different than what I expected so I'm having trouble adjusting to that as well. I love my Intercommunication class; my teacher is real fun and she has a way of explaining things, but my Human Communication's teacher is very awkward and I'm not learning a lot. I spend more time doodling on paper or going on Facebook with my Kindle.

Things are going pretty good. My car acted up today but today has been a very exhausting day. I went to 5 different cities so I spent a lot of time driving. Since I got a job, I celebrated by filling up my tank. It sure feels good to get that needle past the full tank.

I hope to be blogging more often on my Xanga account so stay tuned. I'm sure you'll hear from me again VERY soon.

On the 14th, it'll be 9 years since I first joined Xanga. I haven't really been a part of the community, but I was a Lifetime member and also a "True" member. Practically the only reason why I commented on other blogs was to get the "true" membership; and I know for a fact that I blogged about it because I tend to revisit past Xanga entries to see what was going on in my life. I've accumulated over 1,300 posts over the past 9 years, and it's been a ride. I may not have changed a lot since I was 14 years old, but I can sure as hell say that my grammar and punctuation has changed.

It's unfortunate to say that Xanga will probably be shutting down about 16 days after that; I say "probably" because there's a good chance that it's going to get shutdown. I'm almost certain that it's going to get shutdown because the Xanga team have managed to extend the due date; originally, Xanga needed 60,000 dollars in fundraiser money by the 15th in order to get everything ready for "Xanga 2.0." It doesn't take a mathematician to know that, at the rate of money contribution, the fundraiser wouldn't meet 60,000. I'm even willing to say that it wouldn't even made it past 45,000 dollars by the 15th. People asked Xanga to extend the due date, and they responded with good news; however, it's not going to do much good. So far, there's 38,387 dollars pledged to Xanga if the fundraiser is successful. Since the due date has been extended, there's now 22 days (as opposed to 6 days). If the due date was still the 15th, the fundraiser would have to make an average of 3,602 dollars a day. Now that there's 22 days, Xanga has to average 982-983 dollars a day. Only four people have donated 480 dollars in one donation. Unless 982 people donate a dollar everyday, there's going to be a problem. The amount pledged is increasing very slowly; I'm sure it'll make to 40,000 dollars but there's still another 20,000 dollars that you have to account for. Unless a huge amount of money is put into the fundraiser, the probability that the fundraiser is going to be successful is very slim. Of course...things could change, but they aren't likely too. The main reason, from what I understand, is that this "Xanga 2.0" is going to require a paid membership of 48 dollars a year. It doesn't seem like a lot of money, but I pay 50 dollars a year for Xbox Live. That's 100 dollars a year. On top of that, Netflix is another 100 dollars a year. Ultimately, I would pay 200 dollars a year from memberships to a website. 24% of that money is going towards a blog. Why the hell would I do that when I can just use Facebook or the other well known blogging websites that offer their services free of charge? There'd have to be a huge incentive, but the Xanga Team hasn't really shown much. I guess it's because they want it to be a surprise. They hinted about the new features in their latest entry, but it only gives very general information. There are no screenshots, no actual examples of a Xanga 2.0 account, and it's possibly because Xanga hasn't finished getting Xanga 2.0 ready. I'm not sure if it's because, deep down inside, they know the fundraiser won't be successful, or if it's because they don't want to put all the effort into something and end up wasting their time because I think that it would be the ultimate let down if they work super hard on getting everything done only to fall 15,000 dollars short of being successful with the fundraiser.

And yes...I do predict that the fundraiser will end with only 45,000 dollars pledged which I'm actually over-estimating. To me, that's like the best case scenario.

Some of the most well known users on Xanga are, of course, going to be pledging their time/money to the fundraiser because they have developed a reputation and it'd be a shame if they had to start back over on a different website where the community wasn't micro-focused. It seems like the Xanga community is very small compared to other blogging websites because I always see the front page with regular users that I really have no interest in. In a way, I'm actually kind of happy to see all those popular blogs die out with the rest of us. Of course, there are going to be some, maybe most, well-known users who are going to stay for Xanga 2.0 to see what it's all about, but I believe that the general audience is going to turn towards different blogs. I, for one, have changed over to Google because Google is a big company and I just don't think they would shutdown a portion of their website without having an extremely big reason to.

Just because I moved over already doesn't mean I don't regret it. It's really unfortunate that I would have to make a decision like this because I really anticipated to blog on this website for as long as I could. It just so happens that it's probably going to end this month. Even still, my blog lasted me for 9 years and I saved 1,300 entries onto my computer so I'm not exactly losing much. But for some people...they might be losing a lot. I mean...I've been through some psychologically messed up stuff the past years and Xanga really helped me get my thoughts out there. Xanga was my place for comfort because I knew the website well. I could've been popular, but no one wants to read about other people's lives, and that's the downfall of blogging with the intention on having a popular blog because most of the popular blogs are about other topics that people actually care about. However, now that I got a google account...I actually have two blogs: one for personal use, and one for the kind of topics people are willing to read about. Everything is set-up, but I haven't migrated fully to it because there's always a change that Xanga will reach 60,000 dollars and end up providing free service for a good quality product.

This will be my last post after 9 years of my life. Xanga, I will miss you and my heart will always be with you. But if it comes to decision making, I'm going to make the best financial decision that I can. Good-bye, Xanga...and godspeed, Xanga team.

My favorite watch broke today. I bought the G-Shock watch three years ago and I've never had a problem with it. I originally bought it because I was feeling proud of myself and wanted to give myself a gift that I normally wouldn't buy. In a way, the watch was always there for me. However, my girlfriend and I went swimming today and water managed to get inside (don't ask me how) and pretty much damaged all the components inside of it. Tomorrow I'll be sending it in to see if it's worth the repairs; I'm guessing it's gonna be the price of a new watch since the price range to repair the watch is going to be between 10 dollars to 150 dollars. If it's 150 dollars, I'm pretty sure they're just going to replace it with a new one. If I can repair it at a decent price, I'll do it because that watch has been through a lot. I'm just really disappointed in how it happened; getting water inside was the last thing that I expected to happen. I expected the battery to run out (despite it being solar powered) before anything else. After all, it was water resistant to 20 bar and I've never went below 10 feet. Took showers with it and all kinds of stuff but not scuba dive or whatever. I'm gonna send it in and hope for the best but I seriously doubt they're going to give me good news. It's a shame that their product (which they claim to be "unbreakable") only has a 1 year warranty. If you buy something that claims to be something big and it only has a 1 year warranty, I would seriously doubt it. If you claim something to be unbreakable, then you should offer a lifetime warranty to back yourself up in case it is proven to be false.

Today has been a decent day, but I'm really upset that my watch doesn't work. Just thought I'd let you know that I'm upset, even if it's a seemingly small and insignificant thing. But it means a lot to me...so...

Right now is the only time I'm glad that I don't live in my own apartment because I don't have a job. I'm an extremely fortunate person to have such supportive grandparents; otherwise, I don't know what I would do. Because I live with my grandparents and they provide for me what I can't provide for myself, I can't really fathom the real magnitude of the situation right now. If it was anyone else in my shoes, they probably would've set everything aside and  spent all day looking for jobs. They would've dressed nicely and took the time for apply for different positions at various stores. But for me...I'm more relaxed about it, and that's not something that I should really be proud of because I don't have a job. I'm not making money. The best thing about it all is the fact that I got all this time to do stuff and I've been practically stress free. Yesterday I spent a good amount of time cleaning up my room; I've wanted to do some stuff in my room for a while but never had the chance to get around to it because I'm very rarely home. I took all the crap from underneath my bed, re-arranged my clothes drawer, threw away damaged clothing and socks, and re-organized all my documents into more specific folders. All I gotta do is finish cleaning up, help my grandparents with some stuff around the house...and I plan on driving over to Kathleen's place tomorrow night. I told her that I wasn't sure what was going to happen and I'm telling the truth because I don't want to leave my grandparents without showing them that I've put forth effort for their satisfaction. The problem with my grandparents is that they don't really tell me specifically what they want done because they're old-fashioned. If they were me, they'd be doing all kinds of seemingly random things like planting more flowers in the backyard or something like that. They'll tell me what can be done around the house and I'll do it, but I always have this feeling that they're disappointed in my lack of effort. I'm pretty much the type of person who is okay with people bossing him around because that makes life simple. You tell me what to do, and I'll do it because I'll know that it's what you want done and there's not a problem. When I worked with David and his dad doing framing, that's what I pretty much did. They had the knowledge of how to do stuff and I was pretty much the "bitch" who gave them tools, carried heavy stuff around, etc. But I'm okay with that. I'm not afraid to do hard work but I don't usually do hard work on my own. I don't like to think too much. I am, by definition, type B. Some people believe that getting degrees and working hard is a good kind of stress but I don't believe there is such thing as good stress. Stress is stress, y' know? Ain't nobody got time for that.

It's really unfortunate the way things have turned out in my life. Falling in love has been the most incredible experiencing and most wonderful thing I've ever experienced, but I don't feel like I've changed as much as I would've liked. You would think that having a competitive girlfriend would help me strive to be competitive as well but I'm still struggling to find motivation. My girlfriend and I both know that it's not there. I want a better life, but I don't realize it yet and I'm really fucking scared. Been scared for a while now, actually.

Losing my job was the worst of my troubles. Going to Brazil, I really wanted to find myself and come out with a new perspective on important things and in a way...I have. People believe that I'm more talkative than I was and that's because I didn't really have the chance to talk that much in Brazil. I was really held back and put into awkward situations. I turned out okay thanks to my girlfriend translating for me, but it took an open-mind and a lot of patience. So I enjoy talking with people more because we can actually understand each other. That's basically what I came back with when I originally wanted to come back a different person. When I came back from Texas several years ago, I was a different person. I was very productive, woke up early, did shit, but it eventually wore off and I went back to my old self. But...things can change, can they not? I guess we'll find out.

I also recently found out that Xanga is probably going to be shutdown due to insufficient funds to re-launch it. I've had my Xanga since around 2004 (14 years old) and I regret not doing more private entries. I don't really have any juicy stuff that makes me go "ahh yeah...I remember that." When I cleaned my room a little bit, I found some sheets of paper that had my writing on it, and they were old diary entries, poems, etc. I'm more likely to find juicy stuff lying around my room than I am looking in my own online diary. So I got my archieved blogs and I'm pretty much waiting till Xanga gets shutdown to figure out where I wanna take my blog next. I hope it doesn't get shutdown; the fund is already over halfway there and they've still got about 19-20 days left before it's gonna be shutdown. I can't really donate since I'm trying to save all the money I can since I don't have a job.

What I plan on doing is Friday while my girlfriend is at work, I'm gonna spend time applying for jobs and being productive. I really need to apply for jobs because next week, I told my grandmother that I'd go back to Krogers if I didn't have a job...and I really hate that. I really didn't want to go back but I just might have to if I want to some money to be able to pay for gas and all that stuff. I really fucking hate working at grocery stores; I planned on applying for different jobs sooner but I haven't done anything. My sister talked to someone who manages a call center, and I was hoping that I'd land the job because it would've been awesome but, of course, "no experience required" just translates into "you don't need to be required to have experience, but we're gonna hire the people who do anyways so it doesn't really matter." I love it when businesses play around with words. I hate being a pessimist, but I just don't see how it's possible to overlook stuff like that and not die a little on the inside. The world fucking sucks, you know? I read a quote somewhere that said "we live to die, we rise to fall," and I thought that was very true. I hate the way I view life, don't get me wrong, but it's a gift to see that much detail in something to be able to point out such flaws, but it's a curse. I guess that's why they say "ignorance is bliss." I would've rather been ignorant because the stuff that I know is not only depressing, but it's non-motivational.

I guess that's all for now.

I have my first jury duty in about 6 hours almost...shit! I have jury duty in about 6 hours! Need to get my ass in bed!

But I'm not...might as well take this short amount of time to talk about something I really hate. I know that hate is a strong word and there's actually very few things that I hate about the world but I'm kind of leaning towards both sides on this one.

We're consumers, right? Practically everything around us is part of some kind of business. The coca-cola cans that I have on my desk are designed a specific way to get me attracted to it, the taste is distinctively good (designed a certain way), and everything else about the Coke has been designed to attract consumers. Hollywood is the same way, right? The actors/actresses in movies aren't always determined by how good they are, but how popular they are. If John Cena is in a movie, he's going to attract wrestling fans along with women who are attracted to big men. Gunner movies like Rambo, Terminator, etc consist of big dudes. It's no surprise the purpose behind it all; Hollywood is a business, and we are the consumers. Put a movie in with a hott chick, throw a partial sex scene in the movie trailer, and you've got a select age group of men flocking to the movie practically just for that reason.

Of course, why not? You know? Hott chicks in movies that are nude enough to allow you to fill in what you can't see by promoting the use of your imagination. But the truth of the matter is that us consumers are either too stupid to notice, or we don't care.

There are men/women all over the world who compare themselves to celebrities. Some men/women literally starve themselves because they're trying to compare themselves to a certain female celebrities. The problem is that, along the way, their image gets distorted until they no longer can tell what is true and what isn't. You could tell them that they're skinny and it's gonna flow right over their heads because they can't see it. In their minds, they need to lose more weight because they aren't skinny enough. They might even start those high intense work-outs like P90X and whatnot. However, you'll ask yourself...why the hell is he/she doing something like that? They're about 20 pounds. If Charles Darwin came back from the dead, he would laugh at some people. It's all because of this body image that you canonly be beautiful if you're skinny.

Now I can't decide whether I should be blame us, the consumers, or we should blame the media. The stuff we should've done a long time ago is put real women in movies. You can say that all women in movies are real women, but you know that's not the truth. I believe that some people are so stupid that they have to continually be reminded that not every woman looks like her natural self. You've got fuckin' make-up artists, clothes designers, lighting specialists, photoshop specialists, and any other kind of specialist that specializes in making a woman as beautiful as can be. Personal trainers, doctors that do plastic surgery and other kind of surgery, the whole 9 yards.

It fucking kills me to see men and women look up to celebrities as role-models for their body because it's all lies. And people are either, again, too stupid or don't really give a shit. Men will jerk off to celebrities fantasizing about meeting Angelina Jolie in her Tomb Raider outfit, or some woman will have dreams about certain celebrity males. It saddens me to hear that some women honestly believe that there's a possibility that they're going to marry a celebrity.

I never understood it. Yeah, I'm fat as hell but I guaran-fuckin-tee you that if I was going to be put into a movie, my body would make a transformation too. It's Hollywood. They could make me into anything I wanted to be with the technology. It's manipulation, and consumers are a bunch of sheep when it comes to that. I don't have six pack abs, but if I'm going to look up to someone...it's gonna be a guy that works hard at work and at the gym and doesn't have anyone helping but his own mind. I don't get jealous of celebrities because celebrities are celebrities. They have access to shit that I could only dream of accessing. But if you give me access to that shit...it'd be a whole different ball-game.

It's just stupid. The thing about celebrities is that if we left them alone, they wouldn't be such a big deal. We have the power to cancel those bullshit shows on television, but we eat that shit up like it's going out of style. We don't know how much power we have because we don't use it. We're too stupid for that, or maybe we're just too oblivious. But I just think that it's because we're too stupid.