Strange Dream

I can't remember exactly how but Danny, Rocky, Nhi To (WTF), Lena, and I got stranded at sea on a mattress. You know those scenes in movies where someone is about to fall off a speeding train or something and then the other person saves them? It was either while we were on the mattress or before however we ended up there, but danny was hanging off of the edge of something by a bare strand of duct tape screaming his head off, yelling to save a printer that was hanging off the edge of the speeding mattress or whatever contraption was suspending us in the air above the mattress. I manage to save him and yell, "we're stranded at sea, why would we need a mattress?" Somehow on my little motorola metro pcs phone we had gps and on it we saw the world map and were able to pin point exactly where in the world we were by displaying a world map and the map showed that we were floating northeast towards argentina, which in this dream for reason was in close proximity to france. Lena was being kind of greedy and saying, "let's go to france!" I forgot her reasons why, but I remember saying how we didn't know how long we were going to be floating on this mattress (the majority of the dream I kept asking myself how we were floating on a mattress at sea). At this point it was day, perfect weather and temperature with a tropical feel, and we could see surrounding islands, as well as the approaching argentinian coast. Actually, I think Lena was saying how we shouldn't go to Argentina because there was political turmoil there (I think that this speaks to the way in which dreams occur because I remember hearing about Argentina and having a surface understanding of the issues there from Andrew Mam and hearing it during school a bit in conversation, which in my opinion ultimately led to this knowledge surfacing in my dream and expressing itself through the speech of Lena), and I guess that this was enough to convince everyone that we should go to France. All of a sudden it turns to night and our mattress begins to sink and we all become butt naked. We're too far from the coast now so we start like swimming for brief stints to islands and hold onto them for a period of time until we catch our breath and then continue to the next island (these islands didnt have coasts, they were just like green mangrove type things with vines hanging off of them for us to hold onto) even though we couldnt swim all the way back to the argentinian coast the series of strange mangrove islands was enough to get us to the argentinian coast, which strangely enough had their airport fences situated RIGHT at the coast. Like there was beach sand and immediately after, the planes parked in the yard, while some are moving around in the back, a legit airport. Then it was 12:30 pm, Danny woke me up, I said FML because I was supposed to get up at 9 am to study and catch up in school. Woot.

blessed

8:39 PM Song - I whip my hair - Willow Smith (I showed Magdie because it was tripping me out how she's only 9 and talking about going to a party and stuff.

About two months ago my mom asked me if I wanted to go to puerto rico with her to visit my grandmother, and being that same busy person, I turned down my mom saying that I was two busy with the two jobs I was working and two summer school classes I taking taking. Instead my mom took my sister, who (although I'm not 100% certain, since not many things in this world are) didn't seem to appreciate the experience much and instead got faded on the beach and who knows what else. Two weeks later, my grandma passed away. I find it ironic that the sibling in our family who least appreciated what she had was the one who ended up heading out there with my mom. The way she talked about my grandmother she painted her to be some kind of lunatic. I understand that in her old age and many health problems that she might have not been completely there, but she presented my grandma in an almost satirical light saying stuff like, "she was being so loud, she asked the same question like 5 times." It was that experience that reemphasized the fact to me that when possible we have to grab hold of the opportunities that life presents us with sometimes. When I say, "when possible" I think that that's where the problem lies. Even I, someone who dreams in concrete (tries to make everything work out somehow and accomplish all my aspirations) have told myself that I wasn't being realistic when it came to accessing certain opportunities or pursuing certain things in my life.
About a month ago my mom was telling me how she palnned on going to visit Milwaukee to visit my aunt because she was having a family party. Being the busy person who's consumed with a million things all the time, I figured that going to Wisconsin to visit wouldn't be a possibility. Suddenly a part of me found myself in Puerto Rico at my grandma's death bed holding her lukewarm hand, I could my people's music and stories eminate from each pulse. But it was only a vision, a fantasy that would never be fulfilled, and that's when I knew that I would no longer pass an opportunity in life that does not come by often, ever again. So here I am, at the LA Airport waiting for my 10:34 pm flight to head back to the bay area. I took two different flights from Milwaukee->Chicago->here, and now I' trying to study for my two midterms and transition back into the life of a student. I am thankful for the opportunity to be here at this point in my life, this weekend was wonderful, and I feel like I got a great mix of family, friends, and a little Milwaukee bboy culture all in a day and a half. Thank you God for these opportunities and I hope to continue on through this semester muthafudgen killen it in academics, developing current friendships and building new ones, and most of all growing and learning as a person.

Capitalizing on the opportunity.

3:45 PM ----> Currently in MCB 62: Drugs and the Brain Lecture-professor's talking about nicotine and statistical data on use in youth 12 and up. I'm on this laptop chilling next to Bianca Carson, who at the time was KTFO. bahahahah. Song just listened to - Leaders - Nas and Damien Marley from the Distant Relatives Album
- also Dirty Laundry by Bitter:Sweet
- and the Budos Band 3 Album (Tony Lufrano hooked it up much love maing)

Because of the fact that this is my last semester as a student at Cal,

I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'm here in class with my computer to write in this blog, and talk about how I want to fully appreciate this opportunity that I've been blessed with.
Recently I took a step back from my two volunteer internships at the Children's Hospital Research Institute and Alameda Hep B Free Campaign to focus on school. Shortly after I got my financial aid package and realized that I didn't have enough grant money to cover tuition, so now I'm looking for a work study job. Aside that I'm helping BSP start a mentorship program so that they have a means to truly build community. One critique of BSP is that there aren't as many opportunities for members to get involved, since there are about 800 members, and the sad reality is also that not many folks know each other within the organization. John Matsui once said, "The best resource in BSP is each of you to each other", eventually I want to see this program evolve into an inclusive space for all BSP members where if someone wants to share knowledge with the community from talking about cats to a research opportunity to a social justice issue that they want to have meaningful dialogue about, then they can have a space to do that, and eventually it'd be ingrained in the structure of the organization that attendance and participation in these spaces are integral to the being active members of the community. On another note I applied for the Thailand Thammasat program 4 MONTHS LATE. bahahahahaha. Thankfully the EAP people had mercy on my soul and allowed me to still submit my application, but first I had to of course write quite a bit mroe and get my application endorsed by professor Um. Hopefully Thailand will be an opportunity for me to reconnect with my Thai/Chinese culture and figure out a lot of things. I want to visit family that my father never got to know in his youth, I want to go to the records department in Nakhom Pathom and figure out what my Chinese last name is. I wanna bug out with the dancers there. I want to skate. I want to reconnect with friends from my childhood and family. I want to travel. I want to work with a non-profit doing health work out there. I want to appreciate everything that I am privileged to experience. Speaking of appreciation, being that it is my last semester here at Cal I want to get the most out of each day and do everything that I want to do this semester: drama-free. What that entails but isn't limited to is: spending time with friends and family, coming through to meetings for organizations/organizations that allow me to explore more facets of my ethnic identity, dancing (and learning from bboy lucid and folks from soulshifters crew),taking photos, working on another hip hop album with jason, transcribing my Filippines travels to this blog, finishing applications for programs, working on video projects, going to at least ONE cal football game as a regular human being student (bahahahaha), skating, working and saving money/paying off tuition, growing, loving, and learning.

We'll see how things go.

In My Asian Am Law Class.

7/23 Playing: Lykke Li - I'm Good, I'm gone

My Professor in my Asian Am class opened up by asking us this question, one that even though in ethnic studies classes we're asked to ask in regards to the curriculum, we seldom ask ourselves.

Why are you taking this class? Why are you in school?
We always talk about critical thought, why can’t we thinking critically about our own lives?
Given opportunity/want to learn
Understand history/present
Impact community
Goal-finish school-get to where you want
Carol -Want to become a lawyer (works at the cal calling center)
Joanne- Understand law and rules to understand inequalities; everyone affected
Tomas- Wants to become a lawyer in Korea – wants to be able to compare the U.S. vs. Korean Constitutions and systems
Sean - Likes the art of argument and persuasion
Eric- to learn about different things he didn’t know about and get a degree and a job (him his mom and father came to US from South Korea in 6th grade)
Justine-wants to make her family proud, wants to become a lawyer, wants to change lives
Jackie- Can better understand how she came to be in America (born in states though), wants to gain the perspective of how it was for Chinese/Korean/immigrant experiences in coming to United States, Values that they stood up for justice. I don’t believe that the world is black and white. I believe that there is a lot of gray.
Tiffany-More spiritual-understanding your own oppression and using it to relate to others, “I think because of different class/gender we face different forms of oppression but sometimes we organize around that oppression and don’t realize how we can understand ourselves and each other. If I want to improve my own condition I have to understand other peoples’ conditions as well.
Lisa-I thought it’d be interesting and I might want to go to Law School but now that you ask why, the only thing I can think of is because it’s my way of trying to help others but then again I don’t know why. Why not help others? Because we’re exposed to more discrimination, we have to care. How can you turn your back on someone like that?

“Why do you want to help others?”
Prof. says that the recurring theme that he says that we want the truth.
One of the secrets to school is to enjoy it, when you enjoy it you do better at it. The reason why I’m putting this up there is because I want to challenge you all to see what defines you. It’s 6:41 PM, at 6:45, you can redefine yourself. You can say that you felt this way, saw something, and say that this is who I want to be. One thing that is inconspicuously absent is money, I grew up poor and that’s what I always wanted. The Nissan Z was big when I said that when I grew up I was gonna buy one and I did buy a 350 Z. I do public interest work and get paid pretty well, I’m not going to say that it’s not a part of everything, it’s a part of it as well. You can ask yourself, who am I? Do any of these apply to me, or you can choose to not care about none of that as well?

In 7th grade I always ate lunch with two of my friends. My friend Chris had two divorced parents. Chris’ family owned the only Chinese grocery store in town. Chris would get fantastic food from the cafeteria. Mike would have ding dongs, great stuff and never share with anyone. I would have a sandwich of some sort. Chris would always get French fries (which were really good). Every single day for a year, I would ask Chris for French fries and he would always say no, finally he gave in once and let me get two leftover fries. I always told myself that I’d never grow up having to ask anyone for French fries.
People always ask how can you want to help communities and still drive a sports car? (His experiences show that he wants to work for those communities but it’s still ok to have some things that you like, sheeit, you did happen to bust your butt to get to where you wanted to be in your life!)

meaning.

In My Asian American Studies Law Class on Friday we were supposed to do a review session for our midterm but instead are professor proposed to us these questions and the following conversation ensued (in the same document are also my notes from the review but I left those babies out :D ):


Q: Why are you taking this class? Why are you in school?
We always talk about critical thought, why can’t we thinking critically about our own lives?

Given opportunity/want to learn
Understand history/present
Impact community
Goal-finish school-get to where you want
Carol -Want to become a lawyer (works at the cal calling center)
Joanne- Understand law and rules to understand inequalities; everyone affected
Tomas- Wants to become a lawyer in Korea – wants to be able to compare the U.S. vs. Korean Constitutions and systems
Sean - Likes the art of argument and persuasion
Eric- to learn about different things he didn’t know about and get a degree and a job (him his mom and father came to US from South Korea in 6th grade)
Justine-wants to make her family proud, wants to become a lawyer, wants to change lives
Jackie- Can better understand how she came to be in America (born in states though), wants to gain the perspective of how it was for Chinese/Korean/immigrant experiences in coming to United States, Values that they stood up for justice. I don’t believe that the world is black and white. I believe that there is a lot of gray.
Tiffany-More spiritual-understanding your own oppression and using it to relate to others, “I think because of different class/gender we face different forms of oppression but sometimes we organize around that oppression and don’t realize how we can understand ourselves and each other. If I want to improve my own condition I have to understand other peoples’ conditions as well.
Lisa-I thought it’d be interesting and I might want to go to Law School but now that you ask why, the only thing I can think of is because it’s my way of trying to help others but then again I don’t know why. Why not help others? Because we’re exposed to more discrimination, we have to care. How can you turn your back on someone like that?

“Why do you want to help others?”
Prof. says that the recurring theme that he says that we want the truth.
One of the secrets to school is to enjoy it, when you enjoy it you do better at it. The reason why I’m putting this up there is because I want to challenge you all to see what defines you. It’s 6:41 PM, at 6:45, you can redefine yourself. You can say that you felt this way, saw something, and say that this is who I want to be. One thing that is inconspicuously absent is money, I grew up poor and that’s what I always wanted. The Nissan Z was big when I said that when I grew up I was gonna buy one and I did buy a 350 Z. I do public interest work and get paid pretty well, I’m not going to say that it’s not a part of everything, it’s a part of it as well. You can ask yourself, who am I? Do any of these apply to me, or you can choose to not care about none of that as well?

In 7th grade I always ate lunch with two of my friends. My friend Chris had two divorced parents. Chris’ family owned the only Chinese grocery store in town. Chris would get fantastic food from the cafeteria. Mike would have ding dongs, great stuff and never share with anyone. I would have a sandwich of some sort. Chris would always get French fries (which were really good). Every single day for a year, I would ask Chris for French fries and he would always say no, finally he gave in once and let me get two leftover fries. I always told myself that I’d never grow up having to ask anyone for French fries.
People always ask how can you want to help communities and still drive a sports car? (His experiences show that he wants to work for those communities but it’s still ok to have some things that you like, sheeit, you did happen to bust your butt to get to where you wanted to be in your life!)

AAS 141 Review

Song Playing: (in my head) The funky song that Jason and I just recorded today.

I'm currently seated in one of those wooden moveable chairs that those in the bridges space love dearly because of its ability to allow for group interaction and dialogue. We're about to hold a review session for my Asian American Law Class. A few people are on their laptops, some on facebook, some randomly clicking around Yahoo!. We're about to start, and I love that this probably has no meaning to anyone else but me.

Circle of Tangent Flow is Rampant.

Productivity and its Polar Opposite

Don't you just love it when you somehow mystically manage to accommodate everything that you want to do into a day's time? Yesterday was very much the case. I had class, work, kicked it with friends, recorded a track for the new hip hop album with Jason, hit up raleighs with some bsp folks, mellowed out at a friend's house party, went to jack in the box (not something I planned on, I was just impaired in my judgement at the time) with friends, then proceeded to get locked out of my own bedroom by accident by my roommate and passed out on our loveseat (which I swooped on from emily's roommates as they were moving out), then marinated in the goodness of dreams.
circle of tangents flow is rampant. I headed out to stockton this morning to do just the same. when I arrived my mom and younger brother were home chilling. I asked my mother to teach me salsa and she proceeded to get funky for a good 15 minutes while I sat there in awe with a new appreciation for the way she moves her hips. Some of the first pioneers of breaking were puerto rican, they pioneered the concept of rocking from the hips, and that's something that I want to bring with me along my journey with this dance. My mom then left with my little brother to mass, and before I knew it my dad was home and I busted out my guitar and for the first time I just sat and watched him play. It was some seriously beautiful stuff. I have been learning guitar for the past 3 weeks and to be able to have learned the language of guitar and witness it being spoken through another person's hands is a blessing. I then managed to go film for the skate video with ivyn for an hour, head to my friend's 2 year old birthday celebration, then head to another lounge in the central part of stockton to kick it with friends from high school. I'm watching some movie with my younger brother right now (technology's fcuken intimidating these days, he logged onto netflix through his ps3 and is watching videos off of it like it's nothing while I'm like :0 ) I'm calling it a day, we'll see what the next holds in store for me. circle of tangents flow is rampant.

Lunch with the French.

Yesterday Michael Kudus, Aemad, and I got out of Human Genetics Class and Aemad randomly asked us if we would like to join him in having lunch with an, "old french guy". I'm someone who loves going with the flow to the point where it's borderline dangerous, and with that being said we embarked on our journey to King Dong's Restaurant for some inexpensive lunch. It turns out that Aemad had met this fellow in his Earth and Planetary Science 80 class during session A, and they had met because they were in the same group for some kind of presentation they had to do for the class. They also both agreed that the textbook for the class was complete B.S. and both enjoying frequently challenging the professor. The French fellow's name was Jean-Pierre, a now retired man born in Lyon, raised in Paris, ex-head honcho of Total, a French oil company, with 3 kids from 2 wives, a chauvinistic sexist who made some hella out of pocket comments about womyn (ie "I've learned to stop listening cause' all they do is blablabla"), who was also someone who had a lot of life wisdom. Our lunch was a mutualistic Q and A session, we would ask him questions such as about French social culture, the medical school system there, his thoughts on the changes in dynamics between husband and wife once a child is born, etc. He would ask us questions about the US such as what the average salary of a college graduate was for an entry level position working somewhere, and other casual questions. You could tell that this guy had a good heart, and really had an investment in continuing to keep his mind sharp being that he did happen to be half way across the globe taking summer school classes for fun, the same summer classes that I mope about and wish that I wasn't taking and instead house dancing or going on a photoshoot all day while eating cold ass watermelon slices. The thing that I appreciate about Cal is the fact that things like this lunch that we ate, random quirky, unique, special, magical, momentous stuff like that happens on an almost daily basis to me, and I realize that it's my responsibility to myself to engrave them into this digital stone so that I may decipher its hieroglyphics at the ripe age of tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. On another note, Nhi and I are progressing at learning the guitar quite well, John Campbell from BSP has been teaching free classes since session C started and it has been bloody brilliant. We sat in memorial glade yesterday and jammed out for 2 hours while every once in a while I'd sip some jamba juice she got me or try a butterfly twist. She also got a job at Asian Health Services which made it all the more sweet as we practiced bar chords and finger picking. Right after guitar class I swooped up Cristina to go to dwinelle and I couldn't have been happier watching her out there enjoying herself. I didn't necessarily mean for her to keep breaking necessarily, but rather give her a dance to start with if she wanted to branch out to something else, but she says that she's really taking a liking to it, so I really hope that she doesn't stop. I feel like I'm getting better as well. My legs are straight when I do flares now, I can coin drop mill, and my flow with footwork is getting more silk-like. I must now just work on relearning my left are stab and work on chairs and eventually air chairs so that one day I can hit an illustrious halo. I landed a butterfly twist for the first time on solid ground in dwinelle that night too. I hope to keep pushing it for me. Breakers at war is coming up soon in daly city (july 24th) and jae, me, nivay, jon mike, and arthur are getting down. Lucid is going to be one of the judges. One night after session a few weeks back Emily, Arthur and I were coming back from practice when we spotted Lucid and his girl Sha-boogie's car had broken down right next to durant food court. We proceeded to help get them some duct tape to help them seal something inside the hood and over a ~1 hour period lucid told us stories of how he broke out of his shell and started dancing his own way, when he went to toronto for a bit, came back and his landlord told him he had to move out out of nowhere and iron monkey took him in and he would take him to clubs and stuff every night and get down and he'd get inspired and just started doing his own thing. He called me funky, and that alone makes me want to keep going. One day I want to train alongside him. Everytime I dance I remind myself of that moment and use it to motivate myself to keep training. Everytime there is someone that has impacted me in my dance and influenced and inspired me, when they go away for a while and I don't see them, in between the time that I don't see them and the next time I do I want them to see the love I have for the dance by the degree to which I improved. This blog started out being about the french guy and now I am here. that's what this blog sheeit is allll about. circle of tangents flow is rampant.

It's when my eyes are heavy that I have to write the most.

I'm delirious right now.
I have to right about the incident seeing Lucid. I have to write about the eventful day in Manila. I have to write about my amibitions for this summer. I have to write about love. I have to write about death. I have to write for me. I want to talk about the intricacies of my schedule and my hopes for the future. It's imperative that I record these thoughts in my memories before they fade away into short term nothingness, the exhale of cigarette smoke that soon fades into the sky after being blown out. I don't know what I'm really trying to say right now but I'm completely comfortable with that. I learned how to input excel spreadsheets from google doc today into wordpress. I talked to Anne Songdej about the Thai Identity and learned more about her experiences. I still have yet to read that 66 page honors thesis on Puerto Rican (applicable to all ___-american folks) identity formation and acculturation in the US. I love to write, and need to be accountable to my love and do her justice. My dslr's name is nyla, which speaks to the synthetically constructed medium which is used to capture the organic essence of life. I have genetics tomorrow bright and early at 10, then lunch with Jeff Dam, to finish my assignment for AAS 141, to look at the billion post it notes on my desktop from practicing guitar to figuring out what's up with my financial aid right now so I think it's good that I pass out and seriously KTFO for the night. gnite world.

Cherish what you have...before it's too late.

Song Playing: I Wanna Thank You For Stepping Into My Life - Dam-Funk

July 4th, 2010. The day my grandmother left this world and transitioned on to a better place. I wish that I could find the right words to describe the feelings inside of me when I got a call from my mom yesterday to hear the news. Although there are many things churning inside my heart when I think about my grandma's passing, (the only one of my grandparents that I ever got to know) the main feeling I am certain about are deep sorrow, and great joy. Hearing through the sobs of my mother her talk about how she felt she wasn't a good daughter, how she didn't want her mother to die, and exclaim, "she's dead" made me think years into the future when my parents would eventually pass. Would I say the same things? What would I talk about? One thing that is for certain is that I will never even question for a second the fact that I never tried to be a good son. It's ironic that my sister, the one who cares the least about our family is the one who ended up going to Puerto Rico to my mom's high school reunion and to see my grandma one last time before she went into her coma. Sorrow obviously speaks inside of me because of the physical world that we are all taught to consume us, it's clear that my grandmother's physical body has left this world and will soon become one with the soil surrounding it. Great joy because I know that my grandmother's soul is free of the pain of her slow death and is now free for eternity in Heaven. One day I know that I will join her, along with all the people that are dear to me. We'll all sit around her in a circle as she plays one of the fourteen classical puerto rican songs on the piano that she memorized and we all will sing along as long as our lungs allow us.
Te amo manina, cuidate, dios te bendiga. Yo se que estas en el cielo con el Senor bailando con la bomba y plena. Voy a verte un dia despues que sea un abuelo similar a ti a mis nietos...


When we were younger, my grandma would pray with us in spanish and then sing us a song to help us sleep.


Dame la mano paloma so
i can be next to u
dame la mano paloma
para subir a tu nido
que me an dicho que esta sola
que me an dicho que esta sola
a compañarte e venido
they have told me that your lonely
they have told me that your lonely
and i've come to be with you
cuando llege el año nuevo
yo quiero estar a tu lado
cuando llege el año nuevo
yo quiero estar a tu lado
para darte el primer beso
para darte el primer beso
del año que a comenzado
para darte el primer beso
para darte el primer beso
del año que a comenzado
they have told me that your lonely
they have told me that your lonely
and i've come to be with you
para darte el primer beso
para darte el primer beso
del año que a comenzado
they have told me that your lonely
they have told me that your lonely
and i've come to be with you
they have told me that your lonely
they have told me that your lonely
and i've come to be with you

Let's Get Consistent.

Despite the fact that I know that that's probably not going to happen, I'm going to commit to it anyway. I want to write. I want to give the world a glimpse into what I see, smell, feel, dream about. Everything. I want to give myself a reminder and imprint these words into this digital storage unit. SASC SI 2010 just finished yesterday. Regrettably I was able to be there for about 3 hours out of the entire thing, but those 3 hours were that much more worthwhile. Summer is looking to be a very eventful moment in my life, a time of significant challenges, learning new things, continuing old things, rediscovering myself and my identity, amongst other things. I'm going to leave it at that for now because I have to work on my EAP stuff, an application for a pre health pathway program, watch an elbow air flare tutorial, go watch Beth Custer at Yoshi's later, and go help emily la move some of her stuff in to her new pad. Leslie Chanthaphasouk told me about this Thai band called Potato. From now on when I watch this video it will remind me of when my journey to learn Thai began again this summer. Wat-dii.

5/2/10 but really yesterday but deliriousnastazio

I am fcuking delirious right now and seriously think I have some fatty ADD.

Im mad behind in eskuelehan right now and I can't wait to fast forward two weeks so that I can come back and read this entry and laugh that cock-your-head back laugh style where it's like 'pish posh oh goodness look how stressed I twas!' FCUK. more to come. I need to reflect on all the stuff that's been going down in my life. TBC BRUYYYYY BRUYYY

Reflection Eternal

I wake up this morning cracking my fcuked up lower back in home in Stockton wanting to own up to this big list of things that I've said that I was going to do before break started.
The main one that I've been wanting to get up on this break was writing in this blog, but being so conditioned to the lifestyle of a person who's constantly on the run doing something, usually when I find moments like these when it comes to the internet I find myself running to gmail or facebook, but I really want to change things up. Speaking of change, this New Years I spent with my family in my father's room. We were watching the ball drop in NYC and I guess for a moment they went to a commercial. My dad starts flipping through channels and says that it looks like a lot of "Sodom and Gamorrah" in reference to the biblical story in which
'In Genesis 18:2, God sends three men, thought by most commentators to have been angels appearing as men,^[1] to Abraham in the plains of Mamre. After receiving the hospitality of Abraham and Sarah, his wife, God reveals to Abraham that he will investigate Sodom and Gomorrah, because their cry is great, "and because their sin is very grievous."^[20:21] In response, Abraham reverently inquires of God if he would spare the city if 50 righteous people were found in it, then 45, then 30, then 20, or even ten, with God affirming he would not destroy it after each request, for the sake of the righteous yet dwelling therein. The two angels of God proceed to Sodom and are met by Abraham's righteous nephew Lot, who constrains the angels to lodge with him, and they eat with his family.

Genesis 19:4-5 describes what followed, which confirms the verdict as to the sin of Sodom and its end (RSV):

But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them (NIV: can have sex with them , NJB: can have intercourse with them)."

In response, Lot refuses to give his guests to the inhabitants of Sodom, and instead offers them his two virgin daughters to "do to them whatever you like."^{[Gen 19:8]NASB} However, they refuse this offer, and threaten to do worse to Lot than they would have done to his guests, and press sore upon him. Lot's angelic guests rescue him, and strike the men with blindness. They then command Lot to gather his family and leave, revealing that they were sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. As they make their escape the angels command Lot and his family not to look back under any circumstance. However as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with fire and brimstone by God, Lot's wife looks back longingly at the city, and becomes a pillar of salt.'

{wikipedia}

He used this reference to make the parallel to the fact that on the television during the celebration, and on every channel, every bit was oozing with sexually suggestive material and that this was a shame to see. He brought to myself and Michael's attention the question of what the people in times square that evening were really celebrating, and what is the bigger purpose of that thing that they are celebrating? He talked about the worldliness of the people there celebrating and what they should be celebrating should be the continued opportunity to live life and grow in one's love for God and continue to strengthen ones own relationship with him. My father himself said that he feels like a slightly extremist Franciscan in the sense that his devotion to his faith sometimes makes him a bit anti social, but I can understand where he is coming from. It reminds me of this one guy I remember from BRRC named daniel who once said that he doesn't dance at parties because of the lyrics in the songs that are degrading to womyn. It reminds me of that moment because of the fact that in my opinion, that's fine if daniel doesn't want to go to dance at parties because of that fact, but when I heard daniel say that it seemed as if he was jaded towards even attending the parties in the first place, which in my opinion makes him lose out on the other benefits of attending the party, ie social interactions with others and positive memories. Much like in daniel's case, my father's sentiments towards this society and his "anti-socialness" prevent him from interacting with others as much as he has potential to, and he loses out on his social retention. Come to think of it though, my father isn't an anti social person, he still plays on a soccer team, because of getting laid off he's pretty involved in the church community, and a few of his old thai coworkers drove up from fremont to spend christmas day with our family. But I don't really care if I make perfect parallels because this is the circle of tangents blog, my space, and I can take as many mental laps around the race tracks as I want until I feel that I've got a pretty legit mind fuck going on. And to me, that's as beautiful as peeling a fresh orange open with your hands and letting its citrus scents consume your senses.

Wala.