hey kids...

well school is progressing much as it always does. i am way, way, WAY burnt out on school. im very ready to go and do something new. at the same time i really have no idea wut i want to do. damn quarter life crisis.

im just tired of it. tired of classes. tired of students. tired of bullshit papers. tired of registration. im just tired and in need of something new. tired of never quite being able to accomplish my goals. im just tired kids. i cant wait to graduate. i have no idea wut i will be doing after. but my days as a full time student are in desperate need of ending.

i like chicago quite a bit but this weather shit? no no my friends. i do not think i will be permanently living in any city with this cold shit. definitely not my style. and apparently it hasnt even gotten "cold" yet!!!! so while i plan to enjoy it while it lasts. this is not the type of environment i plan to live in.

it really is just quarter life crisis. where i am supposed to have everything figured out, the rest of my life planned out. i just feel like im supposed to kno wut im going to do with every moment for the next 60-70 years. and all i really wanna do is chill on the beach with friends and some mixed drinks. thats really the entirety of my wishes rite now. sitting under a palm tree watching the surf w/ some friends. but ya cant have everything.

i just want it to be winter break. not because of some great love of christmas... even tho it is nice. but its really the only time of the year when i dont have to stress about anything. during summer its school and travel and other shit... the rest of the year is school filled. winter break is pretty much the only time when all the ppl i wanna see are in the same place at the same time. i wish it could be like that more often. but oh well. it cant.

i always feel like all i do is complain here. oh weyell.....

life is going fine... its just doubts about the future that cloud my mind. but those r worries for another day. alrite.... enough of this shit... *big heart*


u were hit with this at 2:34 PM

the pic doesnt quite catch the coolness of this sunset.... but wut ya gonna do?

u were hit with this at 10:33 AM

heres a sunset on a different nite.

u were hit with this at 10:33 AM

looks end-of-the-worldish very cool

u were hit with this at 10:32 AM

damn ima sucker for a sunset

u were hit with this at 10:31 AM

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{Saturday, October 23, 2004 . }

this is my new apartment. this is my room in it. i like it a lot. nice and roomy... and its NOT in frosh housing!! wahoo!! plus i get a kitchen... no more dorm food... a private bathroom.... and just one roommate... awesome.

u were hit with this at 2:10 PM

heres the view from my new place. not quite as nice but still a cool view. watching the leaves change colors and all that fun stuff.

u were hit with this at 2:09 PM

this is the view from my old room... they had me in temporary housing in a frosh dorm... the dorm sucked but the view was awesome. my school is on the shore of lake michigan

u were hit with this at 2:07 PM

here is yet another picture from rugby... haha. i'm not sure where i am in this pic. fun times. fun times.

u were hit with this at 2:05 PM

this is another picture from the same game. the lil asian guy in blue is the ref... called a sir.

u were hit with this at 2:02 PM

heres a picture from rugby. we're the ones in the red and gold. this is called a ruck. i am the person on the ground with my hands covering my head. number 3. haha

u were hit with this at 2:00 PM

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{Tuesday, October 19, 2004 . }

what ifs

i couldnt stay at poly. i couldnt

but the what ifs are killing me. what if i had gone to ucsc instead of here?

i guess im just not entirely satisfied w/ my life here. what if i had just gone to ucsc? i would probably be asking what if i'd gone out here...

argh.... i just need to find contentment.

well its getting cold out here.... cold and gloomy. maybe its just the weather?

ya kno when u have all this stuff ya wanna say... but ur just not sure how much of it is "safe" to write on a site like this.... oh well.... some things are better kept private....

sometimes life just aint fun.... but oh well.... the alternative doesnt sound too fun either.... so i guess im just gonna suck it up.... and handle it immac gangsta style.... muahahahaha.... alrite.... enough of this bullshit.... adios

*big heart*

u were hit with this at 11:51 AM

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{Thursday, October 14, 2004 . }

hmm... this is just weird, sad and random....

	In Japan, strangers bond in death
	By James Brooke The New York Times

TOKYO On Sept. 22, a 34-year-old Tokyo woman posted a notice on a "suicide Web site" looking for companions for a group suicide. On Oct. 5, the police found her and three other women alive but semiconscious after trying to commit suicide by inhaling smoke from a charcoal stove in a sealed tent.

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Undeterred, the Tokyo woman posted the next day a second recruiting notice on an Internet Web site, saying, "I know the method and the process because I have an experience of failing to commit suicide."

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By Monday night, her notice had drawn six volunteers from all over Japan. Three were 20-years-olds: a university student from Aomori, 560 kilometers, or 350 miles, north of here; a part-time worker from Osaka, 400 kilometers west; and an unemployed woman from Saga, 960 kilometers west.

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Strangers in life, the seven found a bond in death. Working methodically, they parked a rented van at dusk on a mountain road, wrote an e-mail with their precise location, programming a cell phone to send the message after their expected deaths. They sealed the van from the inside, took sleeping pills, lit charcoal braziers and tied their wrists and torsos together.

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Several kilometers away, at the same time, the same method of self-asphyxiation was taking the lives of two women in their 20s. One of the women had participated in the failed attempt one week earlier with the organizer of the seven in the van. Apparently part of the same group, the two in the car did not travel with the others in the van, probably because of Japan's strict seat belt laws.

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What brought the nine together, police say, were the Internet's unregulated "suicide sites."

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"Are you thinking of killing yourself?" asks one such site as two cartoon skeletons bob up and down mocking an image of the Virgin Mary.

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Before blood-red colors drip over the macabre scene, the site continues in Japanese: "If you are sure, I will take you there."

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A tour of this black-tinted Web site finds a slide-show gallery of “proper” places to commit suicide. Favorite online and in reality are forests with views of Mount Fuji.

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Another section evaluates 10 methods of committing suicide, rating such characteristics as “pain,” “chance of success” and “annoyance to other people.” Unlike the ancient samurai with their excruciatingly painful hara-kiri rite, today's suicidal youth seem to prefer drifting off in a cloud of carbon monoxide. Jumping in front of commuter trains, some sites note, can leave a family facing a railroad company bill of up to $65,000 in cleanup costs.

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In chat rooms, morbid thoughts reign. “Whoever wants to die, should die,” begins one typically bleak posting. “Whoever wants to live, should live.”

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Another anonymous contributor wrote: “Death makes everything over, right? Everything, like responsibility, will be over. That's why I've been wanting to die.”

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Another section features first-person accounts by teenage girls who have tried to kill themselves with knives. Other Web sites sell poisons and how-to-kill-yourself kits.

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For Japanese with high-speed access lines, which a majority of homes have today, this suicide subculture is just a few keystrokes away. On Wednesday, typing the Japanese words for “suicide” and “manual” into the Japanese version of the Google search engine yielded 29,761 citations.

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Undoubtedly, much of the Internet traffic is confined to depressed people with a taste for the macabre. But about once a month since January 2002, Japan has recorded a group suicide, or attempt, where participants have met through the Internet.

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Free-speech laws leave police largely powerless to shut down or curb such sites as “Underground Suicide” and “Deadline.” But psychiatrists and social workers are starting to speak out.

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Last year's toll of 34 Internet-related suicides was only a tiny fraction of the 34,427 suicides recorded last year in Japan. Most Japanese suicide victims are middle-aged or elderly men. In contrast, the Internet suicide victims are overwhelmingly young adults, largely people in their 20s.

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While Japan traditionally has a higher suicide rate than Western countries, partly because of a lack of religious taboos, the problem of suicide-prone people joining forces through the Internet is universal, with such pacts reported from Guam to the Netherlands.

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“Here is the convenience of the Internet: Anyone who wants to die can just sign on to such site,” Mafumi Usui, a professor of sociopsychology at Niigata Seiryo University, said in an interview on Wednesday. “If you are a real friend in a real life, you know your friend's family, job and life, and can stop him if tries to kill himself. But on the Web site, these people bond to each other only on the point of committing suicide. They don't have any tools to stop others from dying.”

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In such cases, not only are suicidal people feeding off each other, but lonely people are joining a group, a social unit that often is often paramount in Japan. Usui added: “If you try to stop it, it means that you are getting out of the group.”

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Separately, Dr. Harufusa Higano, a Tokyo psychiatrist, blamed a dearth of psychological counseling services in Japanese society. “Really sick people don't commit group suicide; really heavily depressed people commit suicide by themselves, alone,” Higano said on Wednesday.

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Usui, agreed, saying: "Young people easily kill themselves without particular reasons. In general, they don't have real sense of living.”

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Tuesday's group-suicide pact, apparently the largest in modern Japan, has rapidly jumped from somber national television coverage to the underworld of the Web site BBS, or bulletin boards.

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“Next, nine people will try, to make a record,” Higano predicted. “That was actually written on a Web site BBS I found yesterday."

u were hit with this at 2:28 PM

kerry won the debate no question

BUT his mention of dick cheney's daughter (and the fact that she is a lesbian)? a cheap hit... taking many points away from his reputation.... i'm still voting for him.... but i was not impressed by it.

ok thats my thought for now

and its getting cold!

ok adios kids
*big heart*

u were hit with this at 6:52 AM

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{Wednesday, October 13, 2004 . }

thanks for the tags kids!!

and sorry alisha... its University of Illinois - Chicago... not University In Chicago. but good guess mang...

well i miss u kids a lot... off to homework :-/

*big heart*

u were hit with this at 6:55 PM

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{Sunday, October 10, 2004 . }

good afternoon kids...

so i finally moved out of temporary housing in a frosh dorm and i am now living in a nice apartment in the upper class housing :-D

so we had a rugby game versus u.i.c. yesterday.... we have a big tournament this coming weekend.... which i will be unable to play in :(

why u ask? well about 15 minutes into the second half i got a hard blow to the head....

i spent the next 7 hours in the emergency room... level 2 concussion... :( luckily no bleeding in the head but i'm out for the rest of the season... :( also i got elbowed really hard in the face so i have a pretty interesting looking bruise under my left eye... so yea that was my saturday... yay rugby!

another girl on our team broke her leg in 2 different places... she needs surgery... so at least all i did was kill some weak brain cells.... so if uve got an extra prayer to spare send it her way

ok well im on fall break now til wednesday... hope to get all my stuff together... hope everyone is doing well

i miss u guys too!!!! :-( and it is not the same w/o u kids :'-( hope to see u at christmas...

*big heart*

u were hit with this at 12:56 PM

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{Sunday, October 03, 2004 . }

well happy october everyone...

its starting to get cold!! :(

classes are going well

so is rugby.... its interesting... the sport is fun... so are the after parties.... all the ppl seem pretty cool.... so its good times....

i got some pretty awesome bruises at my game yesterday.... the one on my knee is particularly beautiful... it looks like i have a second kneecap off to the side... haha so i definitely am proud of that...

continuing on the path to adjustment... its not easy... just being in a situation where all my insecurities come to the forefront.... oh well.... wut ya gonna do? ride it out i suppose... not too much else to do... but me gusta esta ciudad... so that makes it easier

alrite i gtg... hope everyone is doing well... IM/e-mail me or tag my board!! i wanna hear from u!! ok... big heart.... adios

u were hit with this at 1:54 PM

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