My Veritas

I find that lately I have had a lot of questions.  I have questioned who I am.  What I believe.  What my purpose is right now.  Un/fortunately, it is the nature of Man to question.  That's the way of Life.  But while questions are plentiful in this life, answers are found once in a quarter-century.  And questions often breed unwanted results.  Questions often breed inaction.  So, for tonight, I choose to act.  I choose to find/make answers.  What follows is my philosophy, my game plan.  What follows are my answers.  What follows is my veritas.  What follows is me.

My name is Peter Joseph Okimi, but my name is Joe (and I am Canadian).
I believe that life is a game.  Life is The Game.  If you win, you live; if you lose, you die.
I believe that living is a wonderful, joyous adventure.  It is not bland, it is not boring, it is not existence.  Living is rolling a natural 20 while duking with the final boss, stealing it's loot, and stomping around its hunting grounds.  It's not dropping a mob to 0 HP and calling yourself badass.
I believe that family is vital to my existence.  Those select few, however, are chosen by me, not by blood.  In this case, blood is not thicker.
I believe that life is about choice.  Everything is a choice.  What is perceived as no choice is simply a different choice wrapped in the rotten potato peelings of self-doubt, self-pity, and apathy.  No matter what you do with the peelings, you can't call the end result a potato.  They're still just peelings.  Likewise, life is a collection of choices.  Not a collection of the all-time greatest hits of Fate.
I believe that love is a verb.  Like a seed, it grows with time, effort, and patience.  If those are lacking, it dies.
I believe that God is my Father.  He's not my dad, and he's not my father.  He's my Father (listen carefully to hear the capital letter when I speak) and He has never loved me more or less than He does now.  God is love, and God is eternal.  Therefore, love is eternal.  It follows, then, that God has always loved me with every facet of His being and He always will.
I believe that Why is the cousin of What.  Te reason for performing an action is directly related to the action itself and vice versa.

These are 8 beliefs that I hold; 8 beliefs that are sacred to me.  These are a part of my veritas--my truth.

Random Thoughts (Borrowed)

"Got myself worked up over nothing today.  All the trash that's in my head, I gotta throw it away.  It's alright."
 - Tommy Lee, "Good Times"

"For all we ought to have thought, and have not thought; all we ought ought to have said, and have not said; all we ought to have done, and have not done; I pray Thee, God, for forgiveness."
 - Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan (Antonio Banderas), 13th Warrior

The Mind of a Gamer: A Quest for Power

Had an interesting thought today (while I was in the shower).  A little insight into the mind of the nerd; the mind of a gamer.  Why do geeks/nerds like video games so much?  It's a stereotype, really.  The more of a nerd a guy (or girl, 'cause girl gamers exist too) is, the more he plays video games.  In a way, it's the Nerd Richter Scale.  I think I'm a size 7 or 8.  But back to the question: why?

A psychologist or psychiatrist might have more insight into this than I do, but I think it's all about power.  In high school, a nerd has little bargaining power.  The powers that are respected are physical power (jocks), charisma or attractiveness (prom kings/queens), and popularity (cliques).  The power a nerd has is intellectual.  The power of the mind is not as well regarded in high school as the hotness factor of Katrina the Prom Queen.  Especially if she's a bit of a tease (but not a slut).

So nerds turn to video games.  In those, we rule the world.  We can become powerful, acquire powerful artifacts and weapons, be attractive and popular, find attractive (and gravity-defying) mates/lovers.  In those worlds, the power of the intellect translates into physical power, charisma, attractiveness, and popularity.  We can, and do, have it all.

It's kind of sad, really.  But we all crave power of a sort.  It just comes in differing levels for different people.  I grew up with intellect, but I wasn't physically powerful and didn't think I was very handsome.  I also wasn't popular.  Ever.  It's probably part of why I'm a gamer.  I based my above thoughts on my life.  Since coming to college, my views have changed a little.  I discovered that I'm somewhat good-looking.  I made a lot of friends, so I guess you could say that I've become popular.  I've developed some charisma (as three years of peer advising will show).  Physically, I'm still not that powerful.  Haven't bothered to work out.  It's popular.  I'm a nonconformist.  Go figure.

But, I'm still power-hungry in my own way.  What kind of power do you have?  And what power do you crave?

The Stuff of Life

Ah... music.  In some ways it seems my life revolves around music.  Maybe I should have been a music teacher. Anyways.  Thought I'd post some of my current favorites.  No particular order, I'm just assigning them numbers to differentiate between them.

1. Waiting for the End - Linkin Park
2. C'mon (Catch 'em By Surprise) - Tiesto vs. Diplo ft. Busta Rhymes
    (There is a version of C'mon that's just Tiesto vs. Diplo)
3. Eternity - Alibi (presented by Armin Van Buuren and Tiesto)
4. Your Love - Brandon Heath
5. My Own Little World - Mathew West
6. Light Up The Sky - The Afters

You can find all of these songs on Youtube.  Some of the music videos are interesting.  Enjoy.

Shower Thoughts

I find I do some of my best thinking in the shower.  Not sure why.  There's probably a scientific reason for it, somehow related to water.  Whatever the reason, my mind produces a plethora of platitudes and plankton-like thoughts (Sorry.  I had an urge to alliterate).  A few of the things I came up with, I will not write for your viewing pleasure.

I've had to revise my opinion of a Linkin Park song.  It's on the radio right now - Waiting for the End.  When I first heard it, I remember thinking that it was a little odd, but it strayed from the original sound.  I felt a little betrayed.  When I think of Linkin Park, I expect to hear rock music in my head; this latest effort is a bit more of a ballad.  I even discussed this a little with Claudia.  She was giving me a lift somewhere and the song came on the radio.  I remember her asking me what I thought of it and I told her basically what I wrote above this sentence.  Over the course of this last semester, though, the song started to grow on me.  Maybe it's because I was at the end of my college career, or the end of my student teaching.  Maybe it's just where I am in life right now.  I feel like I've come to the end of something.  But, like the song says, "this is not the end.  This is just the beginning."  Somewhere, somewhen, somehow, I've changed.  And so, the song reverberates with me now.  I find myself singing along (I need more practice.  Still don't have the lyrics committed to memory).

Shifting topics.  Watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus last night.  Definitely a weird movie.  I saw names on the front-Christopher Plummer, Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrel, Jude Law-and I thought that it would be worth watching.  I was right-it was good.  Also strange.  The storyline was straightforward in setting up the problem.  The solution left me puzzled, though.  The resolution was also bizarre.  I'm still trying to process and analyze all of the movie.  Maybe that's my problem.  In one of the special features, the director says that the movie was almost a whimsical move for him.  It shows.  It's a whimsical movie.

Shifting topics.  Had a revelation the other day.  Well, a revelation for me, maybe not for you.  I thought about the basic nature of Sin.  How would I define Sin in a sentence?  Here's what I came up with.  Sin (Satan's Way) is putting Me before You.  God's Way (don't have a single word definition) is putting You before Me.  I think that's all the explanation I'll put here.  Think about it.  It'll make sense.

Okay.  I'm freshly showered, I exercised a little while ago.  I'm starting to feel thirsty and hungry.  Let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow is another day.

Breasts, Pyramids, and Plagiarism

Yes, you read that correctly.  I wrote "breasts".  Your attitude is, quite possibly, about the same as my students' this afternoon.  As we were reading our book ("The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" - rather a good read), one of the boys read the word "breasts".  Yes, you know the connotation (He wasn't talking about chicken.).  And he couldn't stop laughing.  What?  Are we in high school?  ...Yes, we are.

Other laugh-worthy news today included a student in my 6th period asking this question:
"Did the Jews build the pyramids?"  As you can tell, the kid is a genius.

Also in 6th period, I discovered a way to help one of my students sit quietly in his desk.  Playdoh!  I'm not kidding.  I gave him a little container Playdoh and walked away.  He was fine for the rest of the period.  Teacher win!

In more sad/irritating news, I had a student in Composition leave the classroom.  He discovered that I'd given him an F on his last paper.  I did that for two distinct reasons.  First, he wrote me a paragraph.  No more than a dozen lines.  Second, he plagiarized.  Over half of what he had on paper was copied.  How could I tell?  The syntax.  He doesn't have punctuation, spelling, or grammar that correct.  And it wasn't hard to find the passage.  So he got mad.  Started cussing.  I told him to cool it.  He refused.  Then he threatened to leave.  I told him to go.  With an attitude like that, I didn't want him in class.  He'd have irritated me and been a distraction to the class.
I believe that's the fifth or sixth case of plagiarism in that class during this semester.  The last four have been within the past two weeks.  One student has plagiarized two entire essays.  Granted, he changed a few words in the second.  One other student plagiarized a paragraph (not the student mentioned above).  The rest of her essay was decent, so I'm not entirely sure why she plagiarized.  Might have had something to do with the fact that she was playing a game online while the rest of the class was watching the movie.  [shrug] Her choice.

Well, that's about it for now.  Perhaps I'll write about Christmas shopping.  Or the lack thereof.  Whatever.

The Truth about The Truth

*Disclaimer: This is going to be a serious in-depth blog post.  I will be blunt; I will be serious; I might go a little over-the-top; but I will try to keep it real.

"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" That's what Jack thundered at us.  That's what his character believed.  He was the villain.  And yet, somehow, we believed him.  We (North Americans, the SDA church, maybe the world in general) believed that we were not capable of handling the truth.  Before you say, "Hang on.  I can dig it," let me explain what I mean.  The truth is, those pants do make your butt look fat.  But your boyfriend might not tell you that because he knows that you're asking a rhetorical question and he shouldn't give you a literal answer.  The truth is, American forces are not occupying Iraq to pursue justice and democracy.  Those forces are there so that the American government can get access to oil reserves.  If they had gone for justice and democracy, American forces would have been gone after a couple of years.  They're still there.  ALMOST A DECADE AFTER 9/11.  The truth is, the church does not adequately help sinners.  We'd prefer that you look good on the outside, keep your sins in the closet, and never tell us that you're struggling.  That way, we can gossip about other people's sins, remove persons from positions of authority because they're human, too, and we won't have to make an effort to be genuine.  We can pretend that we're on the road to righteousness and there are no roadbumps.
...Am I going too fast for you?  The truth is, we don't keep it real.  The reality is, those pants make you look like a whale, but I'd rather let you look ugly and lie to make you feel better.  The reality is, I could have told you the truth, suggested another outfit, you would look gorgeous, and we'd both feel better.  The reality is, America needs to get out of Iraq and focus on some issues in America.  The reality is, America might still have a war economy.  The reality is, many in the church would rather look good on the outside and be filthy on the inside.  The reality is, if we admitted that we do terrible things in the darkness of our closets then we would feel much better about ourselves.  The reality is, we can handle the truth.  We just don't want to.