This shell that I've been living in
Is only temporary skin
There is so much more here
Than meets the eye
Through my body's prison bars
And out beyond painful scars
I see a light, shining where you are
In my heart I run away
Break the chains of earthly fate
I know that I'll be whole again someday.
-first verse of a song lyric
(Note: I drew the above picture approximately a year ago.)
I listened to the 14th Dalai Lama speak today, and I feel it was one of the best spent mornings in my recent life. Rather than repeat or summarize his philosophies, I leave it upon all of you to find out for yourselves his teachings. The following words of wisdom were borrowed from Miss smil3z.
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
-S. Jobs
Spirituality
Tomorrow I'm going to go see the Dalai Lama speak at Rutgers. I've never heard the Dalai Lama speak at length about anything before, so I figure maybe it'll be a good experience for me (and the 31,999 other people who'll be there). My sister and I were raised Catholic, but after high school, she pretty much decided to abandon Christianity altogether and is seriously considering becoming Buddhist, and it's largely because of her that I'm going. For the most part, I have nothing against other religions. I know that often many religions seem to preach the notion that "our religion is the correct one, and if you remain faithful you'll go to heaven/reach enlightenment/etc, while the rest of them will go to hell/be reborn as a bug/suffer for all eternity/etc.", but I never believed in that particular tenet all that much. I think if there really is a God, he wouldn't be so short-sighted as to make only one religion the official one and thereby cause the other 80% of mankind to go be subject to punishment just because of the misfortune of having gambled on believing in the wrong religion. I believe most religions are valid to some degree, in the sense that many of them preach the same things, only in different forms of expression. Ultimately, I think it's your intentions that matter more than just blindly following the rules. The principles behind the beliefs are more important than just unquestioningly throwing your faith into it without really even pausing to reflect upon what it really means.
My sister sent me that, and it kinda tickled my funny bone. It's so true though in some ways, that many men seem to have so much confidence, at times even unfounded confidence in something they likely shouldn't be all that confident in. Women, on the other hand, seem to do a lot more thinking about things men might consider trivial or a waste of time, and yet they ponder it, obsess over it, go through all the possibilities and options in their heads until they find satisfaction (which would be never). At least, those are generally the stereotypes.
New pictures forthcoming, including finally the one of my cousin postlogic.
New Picture!
For your viewing pleasure, at the request of iLLyuJa, my latest sketch. I kinda like the pose.
For those waiting: I'll get to you, don't worry. 
-=* Edit *=-
Second New Picture
This one is at the request of emjay83.
One more left to do, I think.
-= Edit 2 =-
I drew fanart of Naruto. Woot. Enjoy.
-= Edit 3 =-
Woot. The picture you've all been waiting for:
Ok, I'm definately done for today.
To my cousin: I'll draw you when I manage to find the one picture of you we have floating around our house somewhere.
Note: Still taking requests.
Note 2: You are encouraged to leave comments when I post art. I appreciate feedback on my works. 
I accept both compliments and constructive criticism.
-=* Edit 2: New New Picture~! *=-
Ok, so spygirl4 asked me to draw her as well, but alas, I have only a vague idea of what she looks like based mostly on heavily darkened pictures. I have a hazy memory of her holding a drawing contest once to do a stylized rendering of her, but I couldn't enter at the time (I was too busy). So without further ado, I present to you the product of my boredom, a late late entry if you will:
Sailor Spygirl
Yes, I know. But I was bored and you know what they say about idle hands.
New Picture
If you know korean at all, you'll immediately know who this is just by translating the english at the bottom of the picture into Korean. This is my second attempt at drawing a person from xanga, this time at their request. Please note this is not supposed to be a realistic rendering (those take a painfully long time). Enjoy.
-=* Edit *=-
Cleaned up the picture and uploaded a higher quality scan. Much happier with the results.
Note: You can see this and my other art on my deviantArt page! Just click the visit my website button on my profile.
Note 2: My offer to subscribers is still open and I'm now expanding it to include more realistic renderings with the understanding that realistic renderings take significantly more time. I can only accept one realistic rendering at a time. However, I can do as many anime versions of you guys as you've got pictures of yourselves to throw at me.
music tag
I have been tagged by bo0Lyuhw0o
The name of the game is....
Music Tag!
THE RULES: List five songs that you currently love. It doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now.
Post these instructions, the artists, and the songs in your blog (Xanga). Then tag five other Xanga friends to see what they're listening to.
i'm currently listening to:
1. No.1 - BoA
2. Legacy - Nicole Nordeman
3. With or Without You - U2
4. First Love (MTV Unplugged) - Utada Hikaru
5. Everlong - Foo Fighters
i tag:
1. christyhanaguchi
2. emjay83
3. tokkiyah
4. qt_hannie
5. postlogic
Note: The above songs are listed in no particular order. Also, I picked people who regularly leave comments whom I suspect are the most likely to see this post and respond, with the exception of postlogic, whose name I placed on there just to see how he'll respond to being put on the list.
Relationships (Part Two)
As I wrote in my previous post about this topic, relationships aren't just your romantic ones. You have a relationship with everyone you know, from your family to your friends and coworkers, to the guy you buy your breakfast from every morning at the corner deli. Different relationships in our lives are defined in different ways and have different boundaries. Today, I will be addressing one of the more controversial varieties of these that I've seen addressed in multiple blogs by multiple people.
Friendship. Ah, friendship. Who can live without their friends? Some of the most important people we'll know in our lives outside of our family are our friends. There's often a special trust formed between friends, where we can feel more at ease to say and do what comes naturally. That being said, I've noticed that many girls (much more so than guys) wonder: Is it possible for a heterosexual guy and girl to be friends? (Like real friends?)
The answer is not a simple one.
To start out, let's boil down a romantic relationship to its most essential parts: Attraction (physical & emotional), lust & desire, and compatibility. Generally speaking, often a full blown romantic attraction blossoms out of one of those three things. For males, it's often physical attraction or lust. (No secret there.) Females are attracted by the physical traits as well, but they also pay significantly more attention than guys on compatibility. They try to guage how compatible the specimen seems with their various standards they've set in things like personality, personal success, manners, charisma, dress, etc. (The list goes on.) Often they do this with amazing speed (so as to be efficient), especially as compared to how long it takes most guys to analyze the same traits in a female.
This would be where we begin to run into problems. Guys will first weed out all the girls who are unappealing physically and then usually through some arbitrary system they've devised, pick one out of the remainder. (Usually the one that seems least hostile / most friendly.) There are a few things guys do look for and try to avoid on the compatibility list, but generally they're not subtle things and are easy to pick out. Girls, well, that's a lot more complicated, but essentially, you can be flunked for not having the right stuff in any number of categories on their master list of desirable traits. For both genders, once you're eliminated from the "desirable companion" list, then that's it, you're nothing more than friend fodder.
If a guy feels you're physically attractive in any way, shape or form, there is the risk he'll fall for you, even if he only meant to be your friend at first. Why is this? Well, guys do care about personality and compatibility (contrary to popular myth), but they tend to guage those things once they've maybe spoken to the girl, or dated her once or twice, or even maybe just spent some time with her. Assuming you started out innocently, (let's say as study partners), there's the possibility his attraction to you will work in reverse and your appealing personality will enhance his physical attraction that he feels towards you, and thus will move you up several spots on his "desirable companion" list. But this will not happen (ever) if he doesn't think you're physically attractive at all. That means no amount of convincing will ever get him to believe you're cute. If he even finds you a little, teeny tiny bit cute, there's the risk it'll happen, depending on exactly how much your personality wows him. (Note: This also works in reverse, obviously. You might be the hottest thing on two legs, but if your personality bites, you'll drop a few spots, maybe even fall off the list entirely if it's bad enough.)
Girls seem much more capable of being friends with guys than guys with girls. This is has something to do with the fact that their selection process is a lot more elaborate and complex and that they look into many more variables that tie into their more emotional needs, and less into their physical ones. It's no secret that emotions play a tremendous role in most female's decision making compared to guys. If you don't strike the right emotional chords in a girl, no amount of hot looks or charisma is going to charm her into your arms. Once you've struck out in that department, that's it. You're, at best, friend material, and once you're in the "friend zone" there's no escape.
So as you can see, the major hurdle is that guys and girls work their attractions from opposite ends. No matter what your intentions may be when you first meet and start hanging out, it's always possible that either party will end up falling for the other unintentionally if you meet their criteria and unexpectedly produce qualities they find appealing, but because guys generally look at the physical first, they can fall for a girl they might have written off later on after getting to know her because of her personality, or maybe you were already decently high on their list but your personality propelled you to the top.
In any case, it's not impossible for a hetero guy and girl to be friends. It's just something that's risky by its very nature, because an attraction can form at any time for any reason by either side. A successful romantic relationship has many of the same fundamental building blocks as a successful friendship. If you think about it that way, it's no wonder attraction can sometimes blossom out of a friendship if there's already any existing amount of physical attraction present. So it's fine to make friends of the opposite gender, but don't be surprised or angry if a one-sided attraction forms. It's the risk you take when you befriend someone of the opposite gender.
(*Note: New protected post available for those on my list.*)
(Mostly only subscribers are on the list. If you're not on the list and wish to be added, ask. If you know me in real life, you're not on the list because you can just call me and ask what's up you lazy bastards. )
The unthinkable has happened. I have officially run out of things to write about. For a while, I had a lot of things I wanted to say, a lot of things I felt compelled to write, but now it just feels a bit forced. I try to write and it's like trying to squeeze blood from a rock, nothing emerges. I feel more compelled to draw. So it seems likely that from this point forward, I'll either: 1) update a lot less frequently or 2) update every day, but the entries will be mundane (like this one) or 3) just start posting scans of all the stuff I draw. #3 seems most likely. (But I make no promises that I won't keep trying to write inspirational stuff. Even if it is somewhat difficult.)
In other news, the Mega Millions lottery jack has reached:
250 Million Dollars!
That's a lot of money by anyone's standards. As per my usual habit, I spent $1 and bought one ticket, on the unlikely chance that I'll actually win. I typically do this whenever the jackpot hits such a large amount that it makes the news.
So if anyone has a request or topic suggestion, feel free. Otherwise, my future postings will be either scarce or mostly comprised of my pencil sketches.
-=* Edit *=-
Have you ever felt trapped? Not in the literal sense, but more like some kind of vague feeling in the back of your mind that some external force has guided you into your current situation from which you're finding it difficult to escape. I suppose my life isn't too horribly bad right now, but I have this vague feeling that keeps bothering me. I can't put a finger on exactly what it is, but it makes me feel uncomfortable and edgy. Maybe even paranoid. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but tend to put a lot of stock in my feelings and instinct, rather than in my intellectual reasonings. Meh, maybe it'll go away.
Ok, I'm about to shamelessly just jump onto a bandwagon I see spreading about the Xanga community, maybe due in small part to my writer's block, but before I do, I'm curious as to how many of my readers out there actually still actively read my blog. Since my blog is now reaching its third year (yikes), I'm sure some of the people on my list have long since retired from Xanga, so if you're still alive and reading this, leave eprops or something so I can appease my curiosity.
And now, onto my mildly entertaining entry.
Five Strange / Weird Things About Me
Yeah, I know you've seen it floating around. I've always believed myself to be weird, so anyhow, here goes.
1. I do everything in my sleep except walk. Imagine if you will, that you're sleeping in the same room as me. Through the course of the evening I will do just about anything and everything you've ever heard of someone doing in their sleep, except actually stand up and walk. I've been known to sit up for no reason, talk in both english and korean, move my hands and legs, kick and thrash, roll around (and off of the bed), snore, drool, mutter, and whatever else people do while sleeping. I once even violently kicked my sister who was trying to wake me up. (I have no memory of doing this.) Part of the reason is likely because I'm an extremely deep sleeper. It's tremendously difficult to wake me up and I can fall asleep in a manner of seconds.
2. I love food. Now you must be thinking to yourself, "Um, that's not all that weird." Let me assure you that if I was one of the seven deadly sins, it would be gluttony. I'm not entirely sure why I love food so much, but I dare say that it ranks at the top of the list of things I adore. The only thing that really stops me from eating all the time is the fact that I get full. Even so, nine times out of ten you'll usually catch me munching on something if you ever run into me. The only thing that prevents me from being over 500 lbs is the fact that God was merciful enough to bless me with a fast metabolism. (I know you're all jealous.) Granted, it's kinda slowing down as I get older, so I've had to force myself to watch my calories recently. (For those of you wondering, I'm 5'9" and 145 lbs. So no, I'm not even overweight. )
3. I'm easily distracted. As you might've guessed from my previous entry, I don't focus all that well on one thing. I get restless real easily, and if you leave me to my own devices, my mind will inevitably wander (and so will I). People usually get offended when trying to talk to me, because my eyes wander, my mind wanders, I don't devote 100% of my attention to them. Nothing personal, but I just don't find most normal conversations all that fascinating. I've tried. I've tried really hard, but apparently I'm just not wired that way. Inevitably my mind wanders anyway, and it goes off on this tangent that eventually causes me to say something completely unrelated to what's being discussed. (This happens frequently.) Or I'll bring up something that everyone already finished talking about. My teachers have always accused me of daydreaming a lot, and when I was younger I always found my daydreams more interesting than whatever the heck the teacher was talking about. I probably do still daydream, but I'm just so used to it that I don't realize I'm doing it anymore. Most people construe my behavior as rude. I suppose it is, but it's just how I am and I make no apologies for it.
4. I'm nonsequitur. Nonsequitur (for those of you who don't know) essentially means that I'll do (or say) things that seem completely utterly random and unrelated to anything. This is somewhat related to #3, but a little different for reasons I'll now explain. Basically, I'm just odd. Most people don't ever get to see this side of me, because frankly, I think it would freak most people out (and it apparently does). I do odd voices and imitations, say random things, do random things, none of which will make any sense whatsoever. It entertains my sister to no end and I have fun making her laugh, often out of the blue. These thoughts are always there inside my brain, but only people I'm really comfortable with get to see it manifested outwardly. I guess I'm just a clown. It's fun, though.
5. I'm every marketing person's dream come true. I'm not sure why, but I'm easily swayed by ads and clever (and sometimes not so clever) marketing. In these cases, apparently all my self control just flies out the window. If I see an ad for something and it just strikes me as being interesting or cool or appealing, I'll immediately want it. Not eventually, not next week, not even tomorrow, I want it right now. It gets especially bad when it relates to #2 (food). As you can imagine, all it takes is for me to see a commercial showing some really tasty cleverly dressed food with the right adjectives and I'm out the door to get myself some. When I go food shopping, I always try to make sure I go to the supermarket right after I've eaten something, or it gets rather expensive. I've tried to better myself in this respect by not watching TV. I think it's mostly worked so far.
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