Thursday, December 14, 2006

Please call stella!

Yo, lots going on this week. I have some good bloggin's in store for y'all, but I haven't had much time lately to get it all down. Until then check this out, it's an accent map of English speaking people of the United States. It takes people from different parts of the country's and has recordings of them reading the same passage. It gives you a good idea of the accent of that region. I haven't played with it too much, but I have listened to the speaker from Utah and North Carolina and I had a good laugh. Anyway, check it out. The map covers the whole world, looks like a really awesome site.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

On kittens

So I got a temporary job working at my pop's company while they're doing end-of-year inventory. It's mindless work when it's actual work. I usually stand around and wait for somebody to give me something to do, and when I'm working it usually involves moving dusty bins of obsolete parts that nobody knows the purpose of from one palate to another.

Apparently the parts are from a company they bought out three or four years back. And they can't just throw the parts away because they have to uphold the warranties that the former company put on their products for another seven years. Never mind the fact that nobody around here has any idea whatsoever how these parts are supposed to even work. So they move them from one corner to another where they can take up space and continue to be ignored.

Normally I would point and laugh at this system of mass inefficiency that is a microcosm of the current state of Corporate America as a whole, but in this case it I personally benefit to the tune of $10 an hour to move boxes around in this ridiculously huge shop (like a million square feet or something) where there are so many people that as long as I'm moving a box or throwing something away people will think I'm doing something productive and will mostly leave me alone. Plus I still get to openly mock the system. It's a win-win.

So anyway, on Friday I was hard at work moving around bins and boxes when I heard something rustling around in some boxes in front of me. I moved some stuff out of the way and found myself a kitten. It is a cute little thing with brown fur and black stripes. It couldn't be more than six months old at the most. Anyway, I tried to get it to come closer to me so I could pet it, but it avoided me like the plague. It wandered off somewhere and I didn't see it again for the rest of the day. It was pretty much the most exciting part of my day.

Anyhow, hopefully it'll turn up again sometime soon. Maybe I'll try and chum it over by me with food or something, that'd be fun.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

On existentialism

"Seek first to understand and then to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand: they listen with the intent to reply. They're filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people's lives."
-Stephen R. Covey

"To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers. No servant or disciple can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see."
-Frank Herbert

"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is."
-Albert Camus

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
-Oscar Wilde


People that lament that life is meaningless and has no purpose want meaning and purpose to be imposed on them as opposed to taking the initiative and giving their life purpose. We're thinking too much. I could learn a lot from my dog. Dog's live in the moment, their purpose is to meet their needs for right now. For instance, he currently needs to take a shit, but wont do it inside because he knows if he does there are negative consequences. So right now my purpose is to be courteous to him and take him outside so that he can relieve himself in a better place. It's a deal we have. In exchange for him not shitting in my house I take time out of my day to walk with him.

Currently my purpose in life is to walk the dog twice a day, and feed him when my parents don't have time. I have no job and no friends in the area that I just moved to, which when I think about it is depressing, but at least I have a purpose: keeping my dog from shitting in my house. A purpose I am currently ignoring in order to ramble here.

I don't know if any of this made sense, but it was an effort. Existentialism is fun to talk about, a good conversation piece, but other than that it's a waste of time.

I'll elaborate.

I'm not saying that existentialism isn't important, or that I myself don't like it. However the more broad and open ended you make the question (why are we here? What is our purpose?) the more useless it becomes in terms of finding an answer and actually accomplishing anything.

Now existentialism on a personal level can be helpful to us. It can help us get our priorities straight. A parent's purpose for existence is to provide for their family, a student's purpose for existence is to graduate, and my purpose for existence is to walk my dog. What is my purpose? Is a good existential-type question that with a little time for introspection and discussion can garnish useful answers.

I can't tell you why we're here as a species, nor why we have this odd case of self awareness. I'm sure if I were to pose such a question to you it would be just as difficult for you to answer. There are simply far too many possibilities and far too many questions that have to be answered as a prerequisite to even being able to come close to an answer. We could talk about it for hours, weeks if we were inebriated enough, but it would be impossible to come to any sort of conclusion. At the bare bones of it all none of us really know.... why? That's where faith kicks in I suppose. Not necessarily religious faith, although it can manifest itself that way, but the faith that there is an answer to why we are the way we are where we are.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Seeing things as I am

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
-Anais Nin

Yeah yeah, that's me trying to be deep.

So I can't sleep a wink. I watched some MSNBC Documentaries and then a little bit of Meet the Press, which is usually good for a snore, but then I started reading. Usually a half hour of reading can knock me right out, but lately it just gets me all riled up and restless.

Anyhow, the book I'm reading is called Dog Days and it's authored by Ana Marie Cox. The story is somewhat entertaining, and it's an easy read, and I've just realized that this has absolutely nothing to do with what I want this to be about, onward.

After reading a bit I got this crazy idea to dig up my old journals from my gradeschool years and take a gander. Now I'm further from being asleep now than I was before the Sunday Night Football game.

The first one I cracked open had the date 11-29-99 scrawled at the top. Dude! Seven years ago! I was 13! I read the first paragraph and was struck by a lead pipe of irony.

"I was looking for a book today, and I found one of my old journals. It was from when I was in the 6th grade! And I read it and found out that I was a really corny guy back then. So I decided to start a new one."

I can't help but laugh at that passage, because if I were starting a new journal today I'd probably write that same passage over again. The more things change (CLICHE WARNING! Unless you have a strong stomach I would urge you to skip to the next paragraph) the more they stay the same.

But I'm not going to start a new journal. For one writing by hand is just too slow for me to handle anymore. Also, this has sort of become my journal, but hopefully this is a tad more readable.

So anyway, I've been reading through the entry's, and the first thing I realize is that I wasn't as mature back then as I thought I was. Also, for as smart as I was I could be awful dense, like the time when I was trying to get ahold of a girl and nobody was answering the phone, so I dialed *67 to block my number on the caller ID and called her again and that time she magically answered, I made the astute observation: "she sounded like she didn't want to talk to me." If I could go back in time I'd bop my younger self on the nose. Come to think of it, that'd make a fascinating plot for a teenpop sci-fi novel, but I digress.

Around wintertime of '99 and early '00 I was really good at keeping my journal up to date, with entry's almost every day. At the same time I was having a rather tumoltuous relationship with a girl that had just moved to town from Kentucky. She had severe baggage; I was overbearing and needy, it was a perfect fit. Reading over this again after all these years is actually quite entertaining. I went from being the kid that would write "boobies! yay!" to "the world hates me, I cannot go on!" to "I love her so much, I could never be without her" and back again. Through all the drama and teenage excess I can kind of watch myself grow up through it all, which is probably the most interesting part to me.

Anyhow, I'm thinking about transcribing some of the journal entry's and posting them chronologically so that both of my loyal readers can enjoy the tales of middle school adolescent drama seen through the eyes of a slightly bored and severely convused 14-year-old. We'll see what happens.

JK

Apply directly to the forehead

So it's been around a month since I've posted, a lot's happened in that month and very little has come of it all. I'm posting again because I haven't been in the best of spirits lately (please don't feel sorry for me, I don't) and I was going back over my posts on Turkey Day and I noticed that I update this blog more often when I'm in a better mood. So instead of thinking logically and noticing that I update more because I'm in a better mood I'm going to force myself to post more in order to make myself be in a better mood.

I'm somewhat optomistic. Already I seem to be a bit happier, my social anxiety disorder is ebbing a tad. I'm getting ideas for projects and blog topics. Problem is it's 11:30. Why can't I get motivated like this around 10 AM?

Anyhow, due to my new bloggin' spirit I'm worried there will be a negative affect (effect?) on the quality of my posts, so please, bear with me while I sort my way through this.

JK

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Pompous pundits that are hurting America

I used to watch the Fox News Channel (fair and balanced? HA!) and feel lucky that the left side of the political spectrum in our country didn't sponsor (or at least we didn't take them even semi-seriously) pompous windbags that skewed fact and manipulated emotions in order to spin their viewpoint in a way that makes them appear as not just opinions, but as facts that no red-blooded, flag-toting American would ever imagine questioning. Frequently they will bring on guests that have an opposing viewpoint, but when they do they make sure to have a couple right-wing hitmen of their own in the wings to properly gang up on the guy and interrupt him so often he has to yell in order to get a word in, which in turn makes him look like a douche.

So like I was saying I was feeling somewhat smug that liberals didn't support this type of pundit when I stumbled upon one: Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher. That guy is a Grade A Douchebag. His perches in his power chair and spouts off commantary that is aimed more at getting what turn out to be light chuckles from his audience as opposed to making any kind of sense. His solution to a guest that has an opposing viewpoint that brings up any evidence that he can't find an answer to is to yell and holler and call George W. an idiot. I used to like to watch him on Politically Incorrect on ABC when I was 15, but then I grew up. His comedy is drab when it isn't completely unfunny and is often borrowed and/or rehashed from somebody else. Hell, the guy can't even cause controversy on his own terms. In 2001 he said on air regarding the War on Terrorism: "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." Afterward companies pulled sponsorships and his contract was not renewed by ABC, and at the same time he was awarded received the President's Award (for "championing free speech") from the Los Angeles Press Club.

Seems pretty controversial right? It would be, except for the fact that Maher was only repeating what his guest, Dinesh D'Souza, had just barely said. On the other side he can take credit for another controversial remark where he said that "...dogs are like retarded children."

I know what the conservatives are thinking: "At least our pompous windbags are upstanding, moral gentlemen." To that I have three words: Those Who Trespass. None of these guys are perfect, so let's not try to justify and/or dignify anything here.

Nobody comes out clean in this argument. It's all a load of crap that just needs to go away. Why does the modern political landscape have to be so damned mean? We need open and honest debate in this country now as much as ever. So let's stop demonizing those that disagree with us. Let's stop questioning their mental state and patriotism. Let's compromise and actually try and find solutions to our problems. Let's get rid of all this hot air and start talking again.

My Gamertag

So I have an xbox 360. I don't play all that much, but here's my Gamercard.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Jesus will hate you if you pass this on

So the bulletin page on myspace has turned into a substitute for all those damn email forwards we all used to get. You know the ones where some cancer patient named Karen in Kansas has one week to live and if you pass the email on to thirty of the unfortunate souls in your address book the doctors will move her up the donor list and give her a new spleen that will save her life.

There's something you don't know about this story. First of all, there is no Karen in Kansas, and if there was, she'd be dead. It's okay, you didn't kill her. The chain letter has been wandering around the internet for seven years now, and because poor Karen only had one week to live she ought to be long gone by now.

Even if there really was a Karen in Kansas and the fact that her email had been forwarded all over the country somehow convinced a bunch of doctors to give her a new spleen she'd still be dead. Why do you ask? Because she HAD CANCER! So what she needed was a cure for cancer, not a new spleen, and thanks to your ignorance her parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a procedure their daughter didn't need, and now they have a dead daughter and a mountain of debt. I hope you're happy!

It's so nice to not get emails like that anymore, but now instead of emails the bulletin space is flooded with this excrement.

Don't even get me started on the bulletins that tell you at the end to pass it on or in two weeks your second cousin will suffer a stroke or your crush will dump his or her boy or girl and come over to your house tonight and make hot, sweaty, musky, passionate love to you. Do we really believe this crap!?!

Let me tell you something, over the last few months I've been conducting an experiment. Instead of doing what the bulletin said and passing it on for whatever reason, I'll tell you what I did, I ignored it! And guess what! None of my cousins, first or second or even third, have had any kind of stroke, and I haven't had bad luck for eleven years. I even took it one step further, I've gone out and stepped on several cracks on the sidewalk, and believe it or not my mothers back is not broken!

So I'm here to tell you it's safe to NOT pass on this junk to our friends. Nothing bad will happen and our friends will appreciate that we didn't waste their time. This goes for a lot of the surveys too, some of them are clever and interesting, but knowing who you last hugged isn't going to change the way I view the world. I know, crazy.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Tomacco! And other observations.

So I've been out here for about a month, and there are a lot of things that are different. Mostly small things, most of them I like and none of them are necessarily bad, but still they are not what I'm used to and requre a little bit of adjustment.

For one, EVERYBODY FREAKIN' SMOKES! I'm not any stranger to being around smokers, and for the most part it doesn't bother me, I used to suck on the cancer sticks a little bit back in my rebellious teenage years, but the residents of North Carolina have taken it to a new level. Maybe it has something to do with tobacco being a major crop out here. I'm all for supporting our local farmers, but I'd rather buy a US Cotton shirt or drink soy milk or eat lots of sunflower seeds or not shop at Wal Mart, but I'm not exactly willing to sacrifice a few dozen years from my life and place a severe burden on the healthcare system for local pride. Call me an ass, but I wont do it.

I'm not against smokers, it's your body, do whatever you want to it. I have friends that smoke, it wont make me like you any less, but if you're a girl don't ask me to kiss you (another lesson from the rebellious teenage years) because I'm not too attracted to smelly-haired chicks that taste like ash trays. Sorry.

That said, there are a lot of little things out here that I really like, they include, but are not limited to: sweet tea, humidity, hush puppies, fried food, rain, decent weather, trees, liberal politics (compared to Utah), nice people, and southern accents.

On that note, it's 6 PM and I need to get ready for the day.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Hold on, I'd like to whine for a minute


So I've decided that looking for a job that doesn't completely SUCK and pays decent... well... sucks.

Oh well. If I can't find anything decent there's always Harris Teeter.

The complete lack of a social life SUCKS also. I have no job, no school for schooling, and I don't know anybody. Sometimes I go to Wal Mart and talk to the cashiers (not really).

People always tell me I should go out and try and meet people. Problem is I don't have anybody near my age to go out and try and meet people with. There's my 17-year-old brother, but he hates places and would much rather hang out at home and play computer games. Plus he's already convinced that he hates North Carolina, whereas I'm at least trying to give this place a fair shake.

I suppose if I were brazen/drunk enough I could go out to meet people on my own, but then I wouldn't know where to find these "people" anyway. Everybody I see around here is 30+ and has at least one spouse and at least one child.

Anyhow, I'll quit bitching now. Before I go, one last thing

bleh

Okay I officially feel like a 14-year-old girl, minus the menstration. I'm done now.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Oh my goodness Yancey!

Welcome to muh new blog site. Nothing really amazing or incredible and new is here yet, but maybe if you play your cards right and visit around here every so often you'll find something worth reading. At the moment I'm just adding a few of my old blogs that I'd like to keep published because myspace (where I used to blog) seems to like to delete them after a while (which is why I'm here in the first place). So check back soon!

Saturday, June 10, 2006

What's going on!?!

Some people have it all figured out. They've picked out their school, married the love of their life, mapped out their career and picked out names for their future children.

I hate those people.

Okay, so I don't really hate them. I have a really hard time getting mad enough at somebody to actually hate them. In my opinion it takes just as much effort to hate somebody as it does to love them, so why waste all that energy on somebody you don't like anyway? So because of that philosophy I only hate three people in this world. One of them being that bastard Alex Trebek, but I digress.

I am 20 years old and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

I don't know what happened. I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I was seven. I wanted to be a professional baseball-football-basketball-hockey-tennis player that was also a lawyer in the offseason. I don't know what happened to that dream. My mom would probably say that I got lazy. I would have to agree.

I have no idea where I am going to be one year from now, hell, I don't know where I'm going to be six or even three months from now. I don't know where I'll be living, what job I'll have, which school I'll be going to, what my major is going to be or who my friends will be. I don't know a damned thing, and the crazy of it is I'm really not all that concerned.

Does it bother me that I don't know this stuff? More than anything. I think about it every day. A month ago I was ready to get out of Utah so fast the door wouldn't have a chance to hit me on the ass on my way out. Then I come back from school, hang out with my old buddies again and meet some pretty awesome new buddies (I'm looking in her direction... and she knows who she is, and it's not just her, the rest of y'all know who you's are) and it makes it that much harder to leave. I can't stay. I've made promises that I wont break, so I will be leaving in August, but I'm trying at the moment to figure out how to fit you all into a box so I can take y'all with me.

Ah, I hate thinking about stuff like that. So most of the time I don't. Right now I'm just going with the flow. I don't know what the next day will bring me, but I'm just going with it. I'm trying to focus on the things I know: My job blows, I'm right-handed, I drink too much coffee, I like a certain somegirl (I'm still looking in her direction, and hopefully she still knows who she is), I suck at Guitar Hero, I want to go to the Death Cab concert in August, Anchorman is a sweet movie, so is The Pink Panther, and I heart my friends. When I think that way it lets me think I know lots, and that makes me feel better about all the crap I don't know. I'll figure that stuff out when it comes time to figger it out, and not a moment sooner, because damn it, I'm lazy like that.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

I have no skills!

No joke. I have no talents to speak of.

This may come out of left field for a lot of people. But I was chillin' out on saturday night with some folks listening to this guy jam out on the guitar. He was three sheets to the wind and he could still belt it out pretty good. As I sat there I got to thinkin', dude, that guy could get any girl just by playing the guitar like that, turning to her, giving her a little wink and saying "come here baby." The fact that he had a female wrapped around his body as he was playing only confirmed my hypothesis. Damn that guy was good.

I'm definitely not a hater. If a guy isn't going for my girl and I see that he knows what he's doing around the ladies, I can acknowledge that. If a kid's got it, a kid's got it. I don't hate, I appreciate.

So I was sitting here watching this guy play, and I was thinking to myself. "I wish I could do that." Because in the world of Talents That Will Make You Popular With the Ladytypes, I have none. I have no musical talent to speak of, and that just happens to be the best talent to have when it comes to impressing ladies. A little over a year ago I bought a ukulele because they're easy to play and if a guitar can get you 100 girls, a uke should be good for at least 20. I goofed around with it a lot and my buddy Chase (mad skills, that guy makes playing the accordion look sexy) taught me a song. It took me a while but then I got it down, but then my uke went out of tune, so no matter if I played it right or not it always sounded like crap, so it's more of a decoration now. It actually ended up getting me one girl, but let's no talk about that.

Some guys can beat box, some guys can dance. Other guys know all the right words when talking to a girl. I don't have any of that. Some guys that don't have any skills like that are gifted in area's of activity reserved for the bedroom. I don't know if I'm in that group yet, either. Contrary to popular belief, my buddies and I don't get together and compare the size of our... wristwatches. So I have no idea on that one. And apparently it's not the size of the hour-hand on the watch that matters, but rather the... motion of the second hand. (I'm pretty sure that innuendo just fell flat on it's face)

This isn't to say I have no skills to speak of, I'm not completely hopeless and inept. I can write, but you can't really impress a girl by sitting in front of a computer for hours on end typing a short story. Plus I wont bastardize myself enough to write poetry. Don't get me wrong, I like good poetry, but I'm really bad at writing good poetry, and there is plenty of bad poetry in the world, and I have decided that I wont add to it. It's not that I don't like a certain girl enough to write her a poem, it's that I like her enough to not write her a bad poem, which is the only kind of poem I know how to write. So every girl in the world that has not recieved a poem from me should consider themselves complimented.

I can also cook. I make a mean chili, and I'm a champion of breakfast foods, chicken, and pasta. I can cook most anything that isn't candy, so I guess that's something of a talent, although I'd trade my cooking ability for a nicer car and the ability to play the guitar.

I can also give pretty good back rubs, but usually a girl would have to already like somebody before they'd go for that. It's not really a way to get a girl, but rather a way to keep one.

Since I don't have any of these Talents That Will Make You Popular With the Ladytypes. I tend to pay a lot more attention to the little things. Such as treating a girl right. Opening doors, walking her to the door or to her car, making sure that she is enjoying herself telling her when she looks good, and listening to her when she needs somebody to listen to her, also I like to let a girl know I like her for who she is, not just because she looks good in a skirt or something. Hehe, this is all starting to sound kinda sappy, so I'll stop it there. I don't really have any playa skeelz, but that's because I'm not a playa.

Monday, June 05, 2006

For one last time I need y'all t'roll

My evening has just gone down the crapper.

No joke. I spent most of the afternoon chillin' out with my two-year-old nephew while my sister went and had her nails done or something like that. He's a cool kid. He calls me "Uncle Dude!" or usually just "DUDE!" for two reasons. 1. He hasn't really mastered the use of more than one syllable and 2. I taught him how to say the word 'dude'. I tried correcting him the first couple of times, but I gave up. I figure there are worse things to be called and Uncle Dude beats Uncle Crazy Bastard any day of the week in my book.

So I had fun with that, watched The Ringer, then I was gonna work out while I watched the Sox/yanks game. Well I was about to get started... then it all hit the fan. It's the top of the 4th and the stankee's are winning 13-3. I can't watch anymore. Every time a yankee scores a run God kills a kitten, those cruel cruel bastards. They're definitely not cat people.

So instead I'm going to put off my workout and ramble on here for a bit. I haven't done it for a while, and some new junk is going on, so I thought I'd ramble a bit.

To add to my misfortune I wanted to write this up while listening to some Jay-Z shtuff, no luck, the only cd I have is scratched beyond recognition for my laptop.

Stuff like that makes me want to kill a kitten.

Stupid yankees.

I guess I'll settle for some Rage Against The Machine

Hold on... the disc has to load...

Okay, anyway, let's go. I've been hanging out with some new folks lately since the kids I usually chill out with have jobs and school and ladyfriends and are generally too busy for ole Jason these days. It's all good though, I'm not drinkin' H8orade or anything like that. I still love alls of my friends (Except you, Alex Trebek, you're in the doghouse for sure), life just gets busy, so no worries.

So, yeah, back to the word on the street. So I've been spreading around the Jason lately, which is just fine because there's plenty of me to go around. Went bowling with some folks at Fat Cats on... oh... wednesday? thursday? with Andrew, Charlie, Jenn, Kendra and Taylor... I know I'm forgetting somebody. Good times, the music was too loud in that place so I couldn't really talk that much and get to know anybody, so these folks' first impression of me was my retarded bowling style. Where I bowl the ball and then use all sorts of body language to try and convince the ball to go where I want it to go. It somewhat resembles John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Yeah, it's horrible. Went to Dee's over on 7th East and 21st South and ate like three plates of breakfast food while everybody else nursed drinks and cheese fries. Oh yeah, I know how to make an impression, but I was STAHVING! Then we started discussing the physical proportions of Ron Jeremy's body when I get smacked in the side with a piece of wet bread. I look over to the other side of the room and see this angry hispanic guy staring me down. My first reaction is like "What the feck is wrong with that guy?" Then after spending a few minutes getting good and pissed off I decide to go talk to the manager about it, as soon as he sees me talking to her he gets up and comes over, wife-beater and all.

"Dude, what the hell's your problem man?" He says.
"I don't have a problem, Dude, except that you chucked a piece of bread at me."
"I didn't throw sh*t! Why you goin' off blaming me!?! I didn't throw sh*t! I didn't throw sh*t! How do you know they didn't throw it?" He says, pointing at the only other people in that part of the restaurant, a table of five with grandma and grandpa and all that.
"Yeah, whatever dude."
"Yo, you got a f*ckin' problem? Let's step outside"
"Whatever, I aint steppin' outside with you."
"Why the f*ck not?"
"Because I'm not fighting anybody over a piece of f*cking bread, broseph." (I was also pretty sure he had a knife on him or something. The last thing I want after eating my lumberjack breakfast is a good knifing. That I can do without.)

So he tried to square off with me, the manager yelled at him to not cause trouble, and I just walked away. He argued with the manager for fifteen more minutes and ended up leaving. When we left an hour later I was sure to have my keys poking out of my fist just in case a crazy wife-beater man popped out of nowhere looking for a fight. Fortunately he wasn't around, so that ended that.

Saturday night was tons better. There was a gathering of fourteen or so folks at Andrew's place. Good times man, good times. Cards, pool, Guitar Hero and good people, that's all you really need in life, that and maybe a bar of soap and some toilet paper, but let's not get picky eh?

Anyhow, I've killed plenty of time writing this, so I'm gonna go put on Scarface and try and get some reps in.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Who I am (repost from May 14, 2006)


Call me Kubota


That is my name. It is more my name than Jason is. Kubota tells about where my family is from, and where they have been. Kubota is who I am, where I'm from, where I've been and where I'm going. My name is also Blaine and Daniels before it is Jason. Before anything I am a member of my family.

I am wherever my family is, I have been wherever my family has been, and my family is wherever I am
. In Japan, Wales, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, the US. I've pushed a handcart across the plains and worked in the factories.

I am also Bobby (my legal middle name). My dad's drinking buddy and cousin. I hitchhiked out of town one night when I was fifteen and got on board with what turned out to be a couple of drunks in a pickup. What was left of my body would be found sixteen months later at the bottom of a ravine. The truck tumbled and the truck burned.

Coming to this country for a better life and giving my children more American names like Benny, Richard, and Gary so that they would fit in and then spending three years in Camp Topaz during WWII. The United States government, caught up in the hysteria of war, forcibly rounded up its own citizens and locked them away in a desolate corner of Utah. Their crime was being of Japanese descent. It was an unforgivable act of racism right up there by slavery and the plight of the American Indian. Mistakes were made, but those responsible are long gone and I hold no ill will toward my Nation's government. I would go on to serve in all branches of the military and serve in five wars. Richard adopted my dad, Clark, and my uncles Kelly and John when they were young. Things were not perfect, but he treated them as his own, and they all called him 'Dad.'

When I was five my dad would die in an accident. Almost five years later my mom would marry Kevin, who adopted me in all ways but name and treated me as his own. Many people go without having even one good father. I have had two (good job mom). I proudly take his family name, Blaine, as my own.

I am not perfect, and neither is my family. My family isn't any better than anybody elses, but they are mine and I am theirs. I love most of them and hate a few. Collectively they have been both the victims and perpetrators of various crimes and abuses, some petty, some felonies.

Although we are not perfect we have an endless supply of loyalty and love. Everyone is always welcome, regardless of our mistakes. The Daniels' have welcomed the Kubota's and Blaine's, the Blaine's have welcomed the Daniels' and Kubota's, and the Kubota's have more than welcomed the Daniels' and Blaine's. That's just how it works. My future wife will be welcomed by my family just as I hope I would be welcomed by hers. If she has children from another man they will become my children, and if I had children from another woman they would become her children. I wouldn't have it any other way. Life is fickle, but if there is one thing I can guarantee my children it is family.

Friends are very important, but for the most part friends come and friends go from our lives. There are a select few of my friends that have become family (you know who you are) and I cherish them just as I do my family, but other than that friends are picked up and discarded like uno cards. Family is different. You can't mess with family.

I am Jason Bobby Daniels Blaine Kubota, and nothing is ever going to change that.